The Grand Babylon Hotel

Arnold Bennett

(1902)

Chapter One

THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE WAITER

'YES, sir?'

Jules, the celebrated head waiter of the Grand
Babylon, was bending formally towards the alert,
middle-aged man who had just entered the
smoking-room and dropped into a basket-chair in
the corner by the conservatory. It was 7.45 on a
particularly sultry June night, and dinner was
about to be served at the Grand Babylon. Men of
all sizes, ages, and nationalities, but every one
alike arrayed in faultless evening dress, were
dotted about the large, dim apartment. A faint
odour of flowers came from the conservatory, and
the tinkle of a fountain. The waiters, commanded
by Jules, moved softly across the thick Oriental
rugs, balancing their trays with the dexterity of
jugglers, and receiving and executing orders with
that air of profound importance of which only
really first-class waiters have the secret. The
atmosphere was an atmosphere of serenity and
repose, characteristic of the Grand Babylon. It
seemed impossible that anything could occur to mar
the peaceful, aristocratic monotony of existence
in that perfectly-managed establishment. Yet on
that night was to happen the mightiest upheaval
that the Grand Babylon had ever known.

'Yes, sir?' repeated Jules, and this time there
was a shade of august disapproval in his voice: it
was not usual for him to have to address a
customer twice.

'Oh!' said the alert, middle-aged man, looking
up at length. Beautifully ignorant of the
identity of the great Jules, he allowed his grey
eyes to twinkle as he caught sight of the
expression on the waiter's face. 'Bring me an
Angel Kiss.'

'Pardon, sir?'

'Bring me an Angel Kiss, and be good enough to
lose no time.'

'If it's an American drink, I fear we don't
keep it, sir.' The voice of Jules fell icily
distinct, and several men glanced round uneasily,
as if to deprecate the slightest disturbance of
their calm. The appearance of the person to whom
Jules was speaking, however, reassured them
somewhat, for he had all the look of that expert,
the travelled Englishman, who can differentiate
between one hotel and another by instinct, and who
knows at once where he may make a fuss with
propriety, and where it is advisable to behave
exactly as at the club. The Grand Babylon was a
hotel in whose smoking-room one behaved as though
one was at one's club.

'I didn't suppose you did keep it, but you can
mix it, I guess, even in this hotel.'

'This isn't an American hotel, sir.' The
calculated insolence of the words was cleverly
masked beneath an accent of humble submission.

The alert, middle-aged man sat up straight, and
gazed placidly at Jules, who was pulling his
famous red side-whiskers.

'Get a liqueur glass,' he said, half curtly and
half with good-humoured tolerance, 'pour into it
equal quantities of maraschino, cream, and
crême de menthe. Don't stir it; don't shake
it. Bring it to me. And, I say, tell the
bar-tender - '

'Bar-tender, sir?'

'Tell the bar-tender to make a note of the
recipe, as I shall probably want an Angel Kiss
every evening before dinner so long as this
weather lasts.'

'I will send the drink to you, sir,' said Jules
distantly. That was his parting shot, by which he
indicated that he was not as other waiters are,
and that any person who treated him with
disrespect did so at his own peril.

A few minutes later, while the alert,
middle-aged man was tasting the Angel Kiss, Jules
sat in conclave with Miss Spencer, who had charge
of the bureau of the Grand Babylon. This bureau
was a fairly large chamber, with two sliding glass
partitions which overlooked the entrance-hall and
the smoking-room. Only a small portion of the
clerical work of the great hotel was performed
there. The place served chiefly as the lair of
Miss Spencer, who was as well known and as
important as Jules himself. Most modern hotels
have a male clerk to superintend the bureau. But
the Grand Babylon went its own way. Miss Spencer
had been bureau clerk almost since the Grand
Babylon had first raised its massive chimneys to
heaven, and she remained in her place despite the
vagaries of other hotels. Always admirably
dressed in plain black silk, with a small diamond
brooch, immaculate wrist-bands, and frizzed yellow
hair, she looked now just as she had looked an
indefinite number of years ago. Her age - none
knew it, save herself and perhaps one other, and
none cared. The gracious and alluring contours of
her figure were irreproachable; and in the
evenings she was a useful ornament of which any
hotel might be innocently proud. Her knowledge of
Bradshaw, of steamship services, and the
programmes of theatres and music-halls was
unrivalled; yet she never travelled, she never
went to a theatre or a music-hall. She seemed to
spend the whole of her life in that official lair
of hers, imparting information to guests,
telephoning to the various departments, or engaged
in intimate conversations with her special friends
on the staff, as at present.

'Who's Number 107?' Jules asked this
black-robed lady.

Miss Spencer examined her ledgers.

'Mr Theodore Racksole, New York.'

'I thought he must be a New Yorker,' said
Jules, after a brief, significant pause, 'but he
talks as good English as you or me. Says he wants
an "Angel Kiss" - maraschino and cream, if you
please - every night. I'll see he doesn't stop
here too long.'

Miss Spencer smiled grimly in response. The
notion of referring to Theodore Racksole as a 'New
Yorker' appealed to her sense of humour, a sense
in which she was not entirely deficient. She
knew, of course, and she knew that Jules knew,
that this Theodore Racksole must be the unique and
only Theodore Racksole, the third richest man in
the United States, and therefore probably in the
world. Nevertheless she ranged herself at once on
the side of Jules. Just as there was only one
Racksole, so there was only one Jules, and Miss
Spencer instinctively shared the latter's
indignation at the spectacle of any person
whatsoever, millionaire or Emperor, presuming to
demand an 'Angel Kiss', that unrespectable
concoction of maraschino and cream, within the
precincts of the Grand Babylon. In the world of
hotels it was currently stated that, next to the
proprietor, there were three gods at the Grand
Babylon - Jules, the head waiter, Miss Spencer,
and, most powerful of all, Rocco, the renowned
chef, who earned two thousand a year, and had a
chalet on the Lake of Lucerne. All the great
hotels in Northumberland Avenue and on the Thames
Embankment had tried to get Rocco away from the
Grand Babylon, but without success. Rocco was
well aware that even he could rise no higher than
the maître hôtel of the Grand
Babylon, which, though it never advertised itself,
and didn't belong to a limited company, stood an
easy first among the hotels of Europe - first in
expensiveness, first in exclusiveness, first in
that mysterious quality known as 'style'.

Situated on the Embankment, the Grand Babylon,
despite its noble proportions, was somewhat
dwarfed by several colossal neighbours. It had
but three hundred and fifty rooms, whereas there
are two hotels within a quarter of a mile with six
hundred and four hundred rooms respectively. On
the other hand, the Grand Babylon was the only
hotel in London with a genuine separate entrance
for Royal visitors constantly in use. The Grand
Babylon counted that day wasted on which it did
not entertain, at the lowest, a German prince or
the Maharajah of some Indian State. When
Félix Babylon - after whom, and not with
any reference to London's nickname, the hotel was
christened - when Félix Babylon founded the
hotel in 1869 he had set himself to cater for
Royalty, and that was the secret of his triumphant
eminence. The son of a rich Swiss hotel
proprietor and financier, he had contrived to
established a connection with the officials of
several European Courts, and he had not spared
money in that respect. Sundry kings and not a few
princesses called him Félix, and spoke
familiarly of the hotel as 'Félix's'; and
Félix had found that this was very good for
trade. The Grand Babylon was managed accordingly.
The 'note' of its policy was discretion, always
discretion, and quietude, simplicity, remoteness.
The place was like a palace incognito. There was
no gold sign over the roof, not even an
explanatory word at the entrance. You walked down
a small side street off the Strand, you saw a
plain brown building in front of you, with two
mahogany swing doors, and an official behind each;
the doors opened noiselessly; you entered; you
were in Félix's. If you meant to be a
guest, you, or your courier, gave your card to
Miss Spencer. Upon no consideration did you ask
for the tariff. It was not good form to mention
prices at the Grand Babylon; the prices were
enormous, but you never mentioned them. At the
conclusion of your stay a bill was presented,
brief and void of dry details, and you paid it
without a word. You met with. a stately
civility, that was all. No one had originally
asked you to come; no one expressed the hope that
you would come again. The Grand Babylon was far
above such manoeuvres; it defied competition by
ignoring it; and consequently was nearly always
full during the season.

If there was one thing more than another that
annoyed the Grand Babylon - put its back up, so to
speak - it was to be compared with, or to be
mistaken for, an American hotel. The Grand
Babylon was resolutely opposed to American methods
of eating, drinking, and lodging - but especially
American methods of drinking. The resentment of
Jules, on being requested to supply Mr Theodore
Racksole with an Angel Kiss, will therefore be
appreciated.

'Anybody with Mr Theodore Racksole?' asked
Jules, continuing his conversation with Miss
Spencer. He put a scornful stress on every
syllable of the guest's name.

'Miss Racksole - she's in No. 111.'

Jules paused, and stroked his left whisker as
it lay on his gleaming white collar.

'She's where?' he queried, with a peculiar
emphasis.

'No. 111. I couldn't help it. There was no
other room with a bathroom and dressing-room on
that floor.' Miss Spencer's voice had an appealing
tone of excuse.

'Why didn't you tell Mr Theodore Racksole and
Miss Racksole that we were unable to accommodate
them?'

'Because Babs was within hearing.'

Only three people in the wide world ever dreamt
of applying to Mr Félix Babylon the playful
but mean abbreviation - Babs: those three were
Jules, Miss Spencer, and Rocco. Jules had
invented it. No one but he would have had either
the wit or the audacity to do so.

'You'd better see that Miss Racksole changes
her room to-night,' Jules said after another
pause. 'Leave it to me: I'll fix it. Au revoir!
It's three minutes to eight. I shall take charge
of the dining-room myself to-night.' And Jules
departed, rubbing his fine white hands slowly and
meditatively. It was a trick of his, to rub his
hands with a strange, roundabout motion, and the
action denoted that some unusual excitement was in
the air.

At eight o'clock precisely dinner was served in
the immense salle manger, that chaste yet splendid
apartment of white and gold. At a small table
near one of the windows a young lady sat alone.
Her frocks said Paris, but her face unmistakably
said New York. It was a self-possessed and
bewitching face, the face of a woman thoroughly
accustomed to doing exactly what she liked, when
she liked, how she liked: the face of a woman who
had taught hundreds of gilded young men the true
art of fetching and carrying, and who, by twenty
years or so of parental spoiling, had come to
regard herself as the feminine equivalent of the
Tsar of All the Russias. Such women are only made
in America, and they only come to their full bloom
in Europe, which they imagine to be a continent
created by Providence for their diversion.

The young lady by the window glanced
disapprovingly at the menu card. Then she looked
round the dining-room, and, while admiring the
diners, decided that the room itself was rather
small and plain. Then she gazed through the open
window, and told herself that though the Thames by
twilight was passable enough, it was by no means
level with the Hudson, on whose shores her father
had a hundred thousand dollar country cottage.
Then she returned to the menu, and with a pursing
of lovely lips said that there appeared to be
nothing to eat.

'Sorry to keep you waiting, Nella.' It was Mr
Racksole, the intrepid millionaire who had dared
to order an Angel Kiss in the smoke-room of the
Grand Babylon. Nella - her proper name was Helen
- smiled at her parent cautiously, reserving to
herself the right to scold if she should feel so
inclined.

'You always are late, father,' she said.

'Only on a holiday,' he added. 'What is there
to eat?'

'Nothing.'

'Then let's have it. I'm hungry. I'm never so
hungry as when I'm being seriously idle.'

'Consommé Britannia,' she began
to read out from the menu, 'Saumon d'Ecosse,
Sauce Genoise, Aspics de Homard. Oh, heavens!
Who wants these horrid messes on a night like
this?'

'On the whole you've been a most satisfactory
dad,' she answered sweetly, 'and to reward you
I'll be content this year with the cheapest
birthday treat you ever gave me. Only I'll have
it to-night.'

'Well,' he said, with the long-suffering
patience, the readiness for any surprise, of a
parent whom Nella had thoroughly trained, 'what is
it?'

'It's this. Let's have filleted steak and a
bottle of Bass for dinner to-night. It will be
simply exquisite. I shall love it.'

'But my dear Nella,' he exclaimed, 'steak and
beer at Félix's! It's impossible!
Moreover, young women still under twenty-three
cannot be permitted to drink Bass.'

'I said steak and Bass, and as for being
twenty-three, shall be going in twenty-four
to-morrow.'

Miss Racksole set her small white teeth.

There was a gentle cough. Jules stood over
them. It must have been out of a pure spirit of
adventure that he had selected this table for his
own services. Usually Jules did not personally
wait at dinner. He merely hovered observant, like
a captain on the bridge during the mate's watch.
Regular frequenters of the hotel felt themselves
honoured when Jules attached himself to their
tables.

Theodore Racksole hesitated one second, and
then issued the order with a fine air of
carelessness:

'Filleted steak for two, and a bottle of Bass.'
It was the bravest act of Theodore Racksole's
life, and yet at more than one previous crisis a
high courage had not been lacking to him.

'It's not in the menu, sir,' said Jules the
imperturbable.

'Never mind. Get it. We want it.'

'Very good, sir.'

Jules walked to the service-door, and, merely
affecting to look behind, came immediately back
again.

'Mr Rocco's compliments, sir, and he regrets to
be unable to serve steak and Bass to-night, sir.'

'Mr Rocco?' questioned Racksole lightly.

'Mr Rocco,' repeated Jules with firmness.

'And who is Mr Rocco?'

'Mr Rocco is our chef, sir.' Jules had the
expression of a man who is asked to explain who
Shakespeare was.

The two men looked at each other. It seemed
incredible that Theodore Racksole, the ineffable
Racksole, who owned a thousand miles of railway,
several towns, and sixty votes in Congress, should
be defied by a waiter, or even by a whole hotel.
Yet so it was. When Europe's effete back is
against the wall not a regiment of millionaires
can turn its flank. Jules had the calm expression
of a strong man sure of victory. His face said:
'You beat me once, but not this time, my New York
friend!'

As for Nella, knowing her father, she foresaw
interesting events, and waited confidently for the
steak. She did not feel hungry, and she could
afford to wait.

'Excuse me a moment, Nella,' said Theodore
Racksole quietly, 'I shall be back in about two
seconds,' and he strode out of the salle à
manger. No one in the room recognized the
millionaire, for he was unknown to London, this
being his first visit to Europe for over twenty
years. Had anyone done so, and caught the
expression on his face, that man might have
trembled for an explosion which should have blown
the entire Grand Babylon into the Thames. Jules
retired strategically to a corner. He had fired;
it was the antagonist's turn. A long and varied
experience had taught Jules that a guest who
embarks on the subjugation of a waiter is almost
always lost; the waiter has so many advantages in
such a contest.

Chapter Two

HOW MR RACKSOLE OBTAINED HIS DINNER

NEVERTHELESS, there are men with a
confirmed habit of getting their own way, even as
guests in an exclusive hotel: and Theodore
Racksole had long since fallen into that useful
practice - except when his only daughter Helen,
motherless but high-spirited girl, chose to think
that his way crossed hers, in which case Theodore
capitulated and fell back. But when Theodore and
his daughter happened to be going one and the same
road, which was pretty often, then Heaven alone
might help any obstacle that was so ill-advised as
to stand in their path. Jules, great and
observant man though he was, had not noticed the
terrible projecting chins of both father and
daughter, otherwise it is possible he would have
reconsidered the question of the steak and Bass.

Theodore Racksole went direct to the
entrance-hall of the hotel, and entered Miss
Spencer's sanctum.

'I want to see Mr Babylon,' he said, 'without
the delay of an instant.'

Miss Spencer leisurely raised her flaxen head.

'I am afraid - ,' she began the usual formula.
It was part of her daily duty to discourage guests
who desired to see Mr Babylon.

'No, no,' said Racksole quickly, 'I don't want
any "I'm afraids." This is business. If you had
been the ordinary hotel clerk I should have
slipped you a couple of sovereigns into your hand,
and the thing would have been done. As you are
not - as you are obviously above bribes - I merely
say to you, I must see Mr Babylon at once on an
affair of the utmost urgency. My name is Racksole
- Theodore Racksole.'

'Of New York?' questioned a voice at the door,
with a slight foreign accent.

The millionaire turned sharply, and saw a
rather short, French-looking man, with a bald
head, a grey beard, a long and perfectly-built
frock coat, eye-glasses attached to a minute
silver chain, and blue eyes that seemed to have
the transparent innocence of a maid's.

'There is only one,' said Theodore Racksole
succinctly.

'You wish to see me?' the new-comer suggested.

'You are Mr Félix Babylon?'

The man bowed.

'At this moment I wish to see you more than
anyone else in the world,' said Racksole. 'I am
consumed and burnt up with a desire to see you, Mr
Babylon. I only want a few minutes' quiet chat.
I fancy I can settle my business in that time.'

With a gesture Mr Babylon invited the
millionaire down a side corridor, at the end of
which was Mr Babylon's private room, a miracle of
Louis XV furniture and tapestry: like most
unmarried men with large incomes, Mr Babylon had
'tastes' of a highly expensive sort.

The landlord and his guest sat down opposite
each other. Theodore Racksole had met with the
usual millionaire's luck in this adventure, for Mr
Babylon made a practice of not allowing himself to
be interviewed by his guests, however
distinguished, however wealthy, however
pertinacious. If he had not chanced to enter Miss
Spencer's office at that precise moment, and if he
had not been impressed in a somewhat peculiar way
by the physiognomy of the millionaire, not all Mr
Racksole's American energy and ingenuity would
have availed for a confabulation with the owner of
the Grand Babylon Hotel that night. Theodore
Racksole, however, was ignorant that a mere
accident had served him. He took all the credit
to himself.

'I read in the New York papers some months
ago,' Theodore started, without even a clearing of
the throat, 'that this hotel of yours, Mr Babylon,
was to be sold to a limited company, but it
appears that the sale was not carried out.'

'It was not,' answered Mr Babylon frankly, 'and
the reason was that the middle-men between the
proposed company and myself wished to make a large
secret profit, and I declined to be a party to
such a profit. They were firm; I was firm; and so
the affair came to nothing.'

'The agreed price was satisfactory?'

'Quite.'

'May I ask what the price was?'

'Are you a buyer, Mr Racksole?'

'Are you a seller, Mr Babylon?'

'I am,' said Babylon, 'on terms. The price was
four hundred thousand pounds, including the
leasehold and goodwill. But I sell only on the
condition that the buyer does not transfer the
property to a limited company at a higher figure.'

'I will put one question to you, Mr Babylon,'
said the millionaire. 'What have your profits
averaged during the last four years?'

'Thirty-four thousand pounds per annum.'

'I buy,' said Theodore Racksole, smiling
contentedly; 'and we will, if you please, exchange
contract-letters on the spot.'

'You come quickly to a resolution, Mr Racksole.
But perhaps you have been considering this
question for a long time?'

'On the contrary,' Racksole looked at his
watch, 'I have been considering it for six
minutes.'

Félix Babylon bowed, as one thoroughly
accustomed to eccentricity of wealth.

'The beauty of being well-known,' Racksole
continued, 'is that you needn't trouble about
preliminary explanations. You, Mr Babylon,
probably know all about me. I know a good deal
about you. We can take each other for granted
without reference. Really, it is as simple to buy
an hotel or a railroad as it is to buy a watch,
provided one is equal to the transaction.'

'Precisely,' agreed Mr Babylon smiling. 'Shall
we draw up the little informal contract? There
are details to be thought of. But it occurs to me
that you cannot have dined yet, and might prefer
to deal with minor questions after dinner.'

'I have not dined,' said the millionaire, with
emphasis, 'and in that connexion will you do me a
favour? Will you send for Mr Rocco?'

'You wish to see him, naturally.'

'I do,' said the millionaire, and added, 'about
my dinner.'

'Rocco is a great man,' murmured Mr Babylon as
he touched the bell, ignoring the last words. 'My
compliments to Mr Rocco,' he said to the page who
answered his summons, 'and if it is quite
convenient I should be glad to see him here for a
moment.'

'What do you give Rocco?' Racksole inquired.

'Two thousand a year and the treatment of an
Ambassador.'

'I shall give him the treatment of an
Ambassador and three thousand.'

'You will be wise,' said Félix Babylon.

At that moment Rocco came into the room, very
softly - a man of forty, thin, with long, thin
hands, and an inordinately long brown silky
moustache.

'Exactly,' Racksole put in, and continued
quickly: 'Mr Rocco, I wish to acquaint you before
any other person with the fact
that I have purchased the Grand Babylon Hotel.
If you think well to afford me the privilege of
retaining your services I shall be happy to offer
you a remuneration of three thousand a year.'

'Tree, you said?'

'Three.'

'Sharmed.'

'And now, Mr Rocco, will you oblige me very
much by ordering a plain beefsteak and a bottle of
Bass to be served by Jules
- I particularly desire Jules - at table No. 17
in the dining-room in ten minutes from now? And
will you do me the honour of lunching with me
to-morrow?'

Mr Rocco gasped, bowed, muttered something in
French, and departed.

Five minutes later the buyer and seller of the
Grand Babylon Hotel had each signed a curt
document, scribbled out on the hotel note-paper.
Félix Babylon asked no questions, and it
was this heroic absence of curiosity, of surprise
on his part, that more than anything else
impressed Theodore Racksole. How many hotel
proprietors in the world, Racksole asked himself,
would have let that beef-steak and Bass go by
without a word of comment.

'From what date do you wish the purchase to
take effect?' asked Babylon.

'As you will. I have long wished to retire.
And now that the moment has come - and so
dramatically - I am ready. I shall return to
Switzerland. One cannot spend much money there,
but it is my native land. I shall be the richest
man in Switzerland.' He smiled with a kind of sad
amusement.

'I suppose you are fairly well off?' said
Racksole, in that easy familiar style of his, as
though the idea had just occurred to him.

'Besides what I shall receive from you, I have
half a million invested.'

'Then you will be nearly a millionaire?'

Félix Babylon nodded.

'I congratulate you, my dear sir,' said
Racksole, in the tone of a judge addressing a
newly-admitted barrister. 'Nine hundred thousand
pounds, expressed in francs, will sound very nice
- in Switzerland.'

'Of course to you, Mr Racksole, such a sum
would be poverty. Now if one might guess at your
own wealth?' Félix Babylon was imitating
the other's freedom.

'I do not know, to five millions or so, what I
am worth,' said Racksole, with sincerity, his tone
indicating that he would have been glad to give
the information if it were in his power.

'You have had anxieties, Mr Racksole?'

'Still have them. I am now holiday-making in
London with my daughter in order to get rid of
them for a time.'

'Is the purchase of hotels your notion of
relaxation, then?'

Racksole shrugged his shoulders. 'It is a
change from railroads,' he laughed.

'Ah, my friend, you little know what you have
bought.'

'Oh! yes I do,' returned Racksole; 'I have
bought just the first hotel in the world.'

'That is true, that is true,' Babylon admitted,
gazing meditatively at the antique Persian carpet.
'There is nothing, anywhere, like my hotel. But
you will regret the purchase, Mr Racksole. It is
no business of mine, of course, but I cannot help
repeating that you will regret the purchase.'

'I never regret.'

'Then you will begin very soon - perhaps
to-night.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Because the Grand Babylon is the Grand
Babylon. You think because you control a
railroad, or an iron-works, or a line of steamers,
therefore you can control anything. But no. Not
the Grand Babylon. There is something about the
Grand Babylon - ' He threw up his hands.

'Servants rob you, of course.'

'Of course. I suppose I lose a hundred pounds
a week in that way. But it is not that I mean.
It is the guests. The guests are too - too
distinguished. The great Ambassadors, the great
financiers, the great nobles, all the men that
move the world, put up under my roof. London is
the centre of everything, and my hotel
- your hotel - is the centre of London. Once I
had a King and a Dowager Empress staying here at
the same time. Imagine that!'

'A great honour, Mr Babylon. But wherein lies
the difficulty?'

'Mr Racksole,' was the grim reply, 'what has
become of your shrewdness - that shrewdness which
has made your fortune so immense that even you
cannot calculate it? Do you not perceive that the
roof which habitually shelters all the force, all
the authority of the world, must necessarily also
shelter nameless and numberless plotters,
schemers, evil-doers, and workers of mischief?
The thing is as clear as day - and as dark as
night. Mr Racksole, I never know by whom I am
surrounded. I never know what is going forward.
Only sometimes I get hints, glimpses of strange
acts and strange secrets. You mentioned my
servants. They are almost all good servants,
skilled, competent. But what are they besides?
For anything I know my fourth sub-chef may be an
agent of some European Government. For anything I
know my invaluable Miss Spencer may be in the pay
of a court dressmaker or a Frankfort banker. Even
Rocco may be someone else
in addition to Rocco.'

'That makes it all the more interesting,'
remarked Theodore Racksole.

*

'What a long time you have been, Father,' said
Nella, when he returned to table No. 17 in the
salle manger.

'Only twenty minutes, my dove.'

'But you said two seconds. There is a
difference.'

'Well, you see, I had to wait for the steak to
cook.'

'Did you have much trouble in getting my
birthday treat?'

'No trouble. But it didn't come quite as cheap
as you said.'

'What do you mean, Father?'

'Only that I've bought the entire hotel. But
don't split.'

'Father, you always were a delicious parent.
Shall you give me the hotel for a birthday
present?'

'No. I shall run it - as an amusement. By the
way, who is that chair for?' He noticed that a
third cover had been laid at the table.

'That is for a friend of mine who came in about
five minutes ago. Of course I told him he must
share our steak. He'll be here in a moment.'

'May I respectfully inquire his name?'

'Dimmock - Christian name Reginald; profession,
English companion to Prince Aribert of Posen. I
met him when I was in St Petersburg with cousin
Hetty last fall. Oh; here he is. Mr Dimmock,
this is my dear father. He has succeeded with the
steak.'

Theodore Racksole found himself confronted by a
very young man, with deep black eyes, and a fresh,
boyish expression. They began to talk.

Jules approached with the steak. Racksole
tried to catch the waiter's eye, but could not.
The dinner proceeded.

'Oh, Father!' cried Nella, 'what a lot of
mustard you have taken!'

'Have I?' he said, and then he happened to
glance into a mirror on his left hand between two
windows. He saw the reflection of Jules, who
stood behind his chair, and he saw Jules give a
slow, significant, ominous wink to Mr Dimmock -
Christian name, Reginald.

He examined his mustard in silence. He thought
that perhaps he had helped himself rather
plenteously to mustard.

Chapter Three

AT THREE A.M.

MR REGINALD DIMMOCK proved himself,
despite his extreme youth, to be a man of the
world and of experiences, and a practised talker.
Conversation between him and Nella Racksole seemed
never to flag. They chattered about St
Petersburg, and the ice on the Neva, and the tenor
at the opera who had been exiled to Siberia, and
the quality of Russian tea, and the sweetness of
Russian champagne, and various other aspects of
Muscovite existence. Russia exhausted, Nella
lightly outlined her own doings since she had met
the young man in the Tsar's capital, and this
recital brought the topic round to London, where
it stayed till the final piece of steak was eaten.
Theodore Racksole noticed that Mr Dimmock gave
very meagre information about his own movements,
either past or future. He regarded the youth as a
typical hanger-on of Courts, and wondered how he
had obtained his post of companion to Prince
Aribert of Posen, and who Prince Aribert of Posen
might be. The millionaire thought he had once
heard of Posen, but he wasn't sure; he rather
fancied it was one of those small nondescript
German States of which five-sixths of the subjects
are Palace officials, and the rest
charcoal-burners or innkeepers. Until the meal
was nearly over, Racksole said little - perhaps
his thoughts were too busy with Jules' wink to Mr
Dimmock, but when ices had been followed by
coffee, he decided that it might be as well, in
the interests of the hotel, to discover something
about his daughter's friend. He never for an
instant questioned her right to possess her own
friends; he had always left her in the most
amazing liberty, relying on her inherited good
sense to keep her out of mischief; but, quite
apart from the wink, he was struck by Nella's
attitude towards Mr Dimmock, an attitude in which
an amiable scorn was blended with an evident
desire to propitiate and please.

'Nella tells me, Mr Dimmock, that you hold a
confidential
position with Prince Aribert of Posen,' said
Racksole. 'You will pardon an American's
ignorance, but is Prince Aribert a reigning Prince
- what, I believe, you call in Europe, a Prince
Regnant?'

'His Highness is not a reigning Prince, nor
ever likely to be,' answered Dimmock. 'The Grand
Ducal Throne of Posen is occupied by his
Highness's nephew, the Grand Duke Eugen.'

'Nephew?' cried Nella with astonishment.

'Why not, dear lady?'

'But Prince Aribert is surely very young?'

'The Prince, by one of those vagaries of chance
which occur sometimes in the history of families,
is precisely the same age as the Grand Duke. The
late Grand Duke's father was twice married. Hence
this youthfulness on the part of an uncle.'

'How delicious to be the uncle of someone as
old as yourself! But I suppose it is no fun for
Prince Aribert. I suppose he has to be
frightfully respectful and obedient, and all that,
to his nephew?'

'The Grand Duke and my Serene master are like
brothers. At present, of course, Prince Aribert
is nominally heir to the throne, but as no doubt
you are aware, the Grand Duke will shortly marry a
near relative of the Emperor's, and should there
be a family - ' Mr Dimmock stopped and shrugged
his straight shoulders. 'The Grand Duke,' he went
on, without finishing the last sentence, 'would
much prefer Prince Aribert to be his successor.
He really doesn't want to marry. Between
ourselves, strictly between ourselves, he regards
marriage as rather a bore. But, of course, being
a German Grand Duke, he is bound to marry. He
owes it to his country, to Posen.'

'How large is Posen?' asked Racksole bluntly.

'Father,' Nella interposed laughing, 'you
shouldn't ask such inconvenient questions. You
ought to have guessed that it isn't etiquette to
inquire about the size of a German Dukedom.'

'I am sure,' said Dimmock, with a polite smile,
'that the Grand Duke is as much amused as anyone
at the size of his territory. I forget the exact
acreage, but I remember that once Prince Aribert
and myself walked across it and back again in a
single day.'

'Then the Grand Duke cannot travel very far
within his own dominions? You may say that the
sun does set on his empire?'

'On the contrary, he is a great traveller, much
more so than Prince Aribert. I may tell you, what
no one knows at present, outside this hotel, that
his Royal Highness the Grand Duke, with a small
suite, will be here to-morrow.'

'I am. Prince Aribert will also be here. The
Grand Duke and the Prince have business about
important investments connected with the Grand
Duke's marriage settlement. . . . In the
highest quarters, you understand.'

'For so discreet a person,' thought Racksole,
'you are fairly communicative.' Then he said
aloud: 'Shall we go out on the terrace?'

As they crossed the dining-room Jules stopped
Mr Dimmock and handed him a letter. 'Just come,
sir, by messenger,' said Jules.

Nella dropped behind for a second with her
father. 'Leave me alone with this boy a little -
there's a dear parent,' she whispered in his ear.

'I am a mere cypher, an obedient nobody,'
Racksole replied, pinching her arm
surreptitiously. 'Treat me as such. Use me as
you like. I will go and look after my hoteL' And
soon afterwards he disappeared.

Nella and Mr Dimmock sat together on the
terrace, sipping iced drinks. They made a
handsome couple, bowered amid plants which
blossomed at the command of a Chelsea wholesale
florist. People who passed by remarked privately
that from the look of things there was the
beginning of a romance m that conversation.
Perhaps there was, but a more intimate
acquaintance with the character of Nella Racksole
would have been necessary in order to predict what
precise form that romance would take.

Jules himself served the liquids, and at ten
o'clock he brought another note. Entreating a
thousand pardons, Reginald Dimmock, after he had
glanced at the note, excused himself on the plea
of urgent business for his Serene master, uncle of
the Grand Duke of Posen. He asked if he might
fetch Mr Racksole, or escort Miss Racksole to her
father. But Miss Racksole said gaily that she
felt no need of an escort, and should go to bed.
She added that her father and herself always
endeavoured to be independent of each other.

Just then Theodore Racksole had found his way
once more into Mr Babylon's private room. Before
arriving there, however, he had discovered that in
some mysterious manner the news of the change of
proprietorship had worked its way down to the
lowest strata of the hotel's cosmos. The
corridors hummed with it, and even under-servants
were to be seen discussing the thing, just as
though it mattered to them.

'Have a cigar, Mr Racksole,' said the urbane Mr
Babylon, 'and a mouthful of the oldest cognac in
all Europe.'

In a few minutes these two were talking
eagerly, rapidly. Félix Babylon was
astonished at Racksole's capacity for absorbing
the details of hotel management. And as for
Racksole he soon realized that Félix
Babylon must be a prince of hotel managers. It
had never occurred to Racksole before that to
manage an hotel, even a large hotel, could be a
specially interesting affair, or that it could
make any excessive demands upon the brains of the
manager; but he came to see that he had underrated
the possibilities of an hotel. The business of
the Grand Babylon was enormous. It took Racksole,
with all his genius for organization, exactly half
an hour to master the details of the hotel
laundry-work. And the laundry-work was but one
branch of activity amid scores, and not a very
large one at that. The machinery of checking
supplies, and of establishing a mean ratio between
the raw stuff received in the kitchen and the
number of meals served in the salle à
manger and the private rooms, was very complicated
and delicate. When Racksole had grasped it, he at
once suggested some improvements, and this led to
a long theoretical discussion, and the discussion
led to digressions, and then Félix Babylon,
in a moment of absent-mindedness, yawned.

Racksole looked at the gilt clock on the high
mantelpiece.

'Great Scott!' he said. 'It's three o'clock.
Mr Babylon, accept my apologies for having kept
you up to such an absurd hour.'

'I have not spent so pleasant an evening for
many years. You have let me ride my hobby to my
heart's content. It is I who should apologize.'

Racksole rose.

'I should like to ask you one question,' said
Babylon. 'Have you ever had anything to do with
hotels before?'

'Never,' said Racksole.

'Then you have missed your vocation. You could
have been the greatest of all hotel-managers. You
would have been greater than me, and I am
unequalled, though I keep only one hotel, and some
men have half a dozen. Mr Racksole, why have you
never run an hotel?'

'Heaven knows,' he laughed, 'but you flatter
me, Mr Babylon.'

'I? Flatter? You do not know me. I flatter
no one, except, perhaps, now and then an
exceptionally distinguished guest. In which case
I give suitable instructions as to the bill.'

'Speaking of distinguished guests, I am told
that a couple of German princes are coming here
to-morrow.'

'That is so.'

'Does one do anything? Does one receive them
formally - stand bowing in the entrance-hall, or
anything of that sort?'

'Not necessarily. Not unless one wishes. The
modern hotel proprietor is not like an innkeeper
of the Middle Ages, and even princes do not expect
to see him unless something should happen to go
wrong. As a matter of fact, though the Grand Duke
of Posen and Prince Aribert have both honoured me
by staying here before, I have never even set eyes
on them. You will find all arrangements have been
made.'

They talked a little longer, and then Racksole
said good night. 'Let me see you to your room.
The lifts will be closed and the place will be
deserted. As for myself, I sleep here,' and Mr
Babylon pointed to an inner door.

'No, thanks,' said Racksole; 'let me explore my
own hotel unaccompanied. I believe I can discover
my room.' When he got fairly into the passages,
Racksole was not so sure that he could discover
his own room. The number was 107, but he had
forgotten whether it was on the first or second
floor. Travelling in a lift, one is unconscious
of floors. He passed several lift-doorways, but
he could see no glint of a staircase; in all
self-respecting hotels staircases have gone out of
fashion, and though hotel architects still
continue, for old sakes' sake, to build
staircases, they are tucked away in remote corners
where their presence is not likely to offend the
eye of a spoiled and cosmopolitan public. The
hotel seemed vast, uncanny, deserted. An electric
light glowed here and there at long intervals. On
the thick carpets, Racksole's thinly-shod feet
made no sound, and he wandered at ease to and fro,
rather amused, rather struck by the peculiar
senses of night and mystery which had suddenly
come over him. He fancied he could hear a
thousand snores peacefully descending from the
upper realms. At length he found a staircase, a
very dark and narrow one, and presently he was on
the first floor. He soon discovered that the
numbers of the rooms on this floor did not get
beyond seventy. He encountered another staircase
and ascended to the second floor. By the
decoration of the walls he recognized this floor
as his proper home, and as he strolled through the
long corridor he whistled a low, meditative
whistle of satisfaction. He thought he heard a
step in the transverse corridor, and instinctively
he obliterated himself in a recess which held a
service-cabinet and a chair. He did hear a step.
Peeping cautiously out, he perceived, what he had
not perceived previously, that a piece of white
ribbon had been tied round the handle of the door
of one of the bedrooms. Then a man came round the
corner of the transverse corridor, and Racksole
drew back. It was Jules - Jules with his hands in
his pockets and a slouch hat over his eyes, but in
other respects attired as usual.

Racksole, at that instant, remembered with a
special vividness what Félix Babylon had
said to him at their first interview. He wished
he had brought his revolver. He didn't know why
he should feel the desirability of a revolver in a
London hotel of the most unimpeachable fair fame,
but he did feel the desirability of such an
instrument of attack and defence. He privately
decided that if Jules went past his recess he
would take him by the throat and in that attitude
put a few plain questions to this highly dubious
waiter. But Jules had stopped. The millionaire
made another cautious observation. Jules, with
infinite gentleness, was turning the handle of the
door to which the white ribbon was attached. The
door slowly yielded and Jules disappeared within
the room. After a brief interval, the
night-prowling Jules reappeared, closed the door
as softly as he had opened it, removed the ribbon,
returned upon his steps, and vanished down the
transverse corridor.

'This is quaint,' said Racksole; 'quaint to a
degree!'

It occurred to him to look at the number of the
room, and he stole towards it.

'Well, I'm d - d!' he murmured wonderingly.

The number was 111, his daughter's room! He
tried to open it, but the door was locked.
Rushing to his own room, No. 107, he seized one
of a pair of revolvers (the kind that are made for
millionaires) and followed after Jules down the
transverse corridor. At the end of this corridor
was a window; the window was open; and Jules was
innocently gazing out of the window. Ten silent
strides, and Theodore Racksole was upon him.

'One word, my friend,' the millionaire began,
carelessly waving the revolver in the air. Jules
was indubitably startled, but by an admirable
exercise of self-control he recovered possession
of his faculties in a second.

'Sir?' said Jules.

'I just want to be informed, what the deuce you
were doing in No. 111 a moment ago.'

'I had been requested to go there,' was the
calm response.

'You are a liar, and not a very clever one.
That is my daughter's room. Now - out with it,
before I decide whether to shoot you or throw you
into the street.'

'Excuse me, sir, No. 111 is occupied by a
gentleman.'

'I advise you that it is a serious error of
judgement to contradict me, my friend. Don't do
it again. We will go to the room together, and
you shall prove that the occupant is a gentleman,
and not my daughter.'

'Impossible, sir,' said Jules.

'Scarcely that,' said Racksole, and he took
Jules by the sleeve. The millionaire knew for a
certainty that Nella occupied No. 111, for he had
examined the room her, and himself seen that her
trunks and her maid and herself had arrived there
in safety. 'Now open the door,' whispered
Racksole, when they reached No.111.

'I must knock.'

'That is just what you mustn't do. Open it.
No doubt you have your pass-key.'

Confronted by the revolver, Jules readily
obeyed, yet with a deprecatory gesture, as though
he would not be responsible for this outrage
against the decorum of hotel life. Racksole
entered. The room was brilliantly lighted.

'A visitor, who insists on seeing you, sir,'
said Jules, and fled.

Mr Reginald Dimmock, still in evening dress,
and smoking a cigarette, rose hurriedly from a
table.

'Hello, my dear Mr Racksole, this is an
unexpected - ah - pleasure.'

'Where is my daughter? This is her room.'

'Did I catch what you said, Mr Racksole?'

'I venture to remark that this is Miss
Racksole's room.'

'My good sir,' answered Dimmock, 'you must be
mad to dream of such a thing. Only my respect for
your daughter prevents me from expelling you
forcibly, for such an extraordinary suggestion.'

A small spot half-way down the bridge of the
millionaire's nose turned suddenly white.

'With your permission,' he said in a low calm
voice, 'I will examine the dressing-room and the
bath-room.'

'Just listen to me a moment,' Dimmock urged, in
a milder tone.

'I'll listen to you afterwards, my young
friend,' said Racksole, and he proceeded to search
the bath-room, and the dressing-room, without any
result whatever. 'Lest my attitude might be open
to misconstruction, Mr Dimmock, I may as well tell
you that I have the most perfect confidence in my
daughter, who is as well able to take care of
herself as any woman I ever met, but since you
entered it there have been one or two rather
mysterious occurrences in this hotel. That is
all.' Feeling a draught of air on his shoulder,
Racksole turned to the window. 'For instance,' he
added, 'I perceive that this window is broken,
badly broken, and from the outside. Now, how
could that have occurred?'

'If you will kindly hear reason, Mr Racksole,'
said Dimmock in his best diplomatic manner, 'I
will endeavour to explain things to you. I
regarded your first question to me when you
entered my room as being offensively put, but I
now see that you had some justification.' He
smiled politely. 'I was passing along this
corridor about eleven o'clock, when I found Miss
Racksole in a difficulty with the hotel servants.
Miss Racksole was retiring to rest in this room
when a large stone, which must have been thrown
from the Embankment, broke the window, as you see.
Apart from the discomfort of the broken window,
she did not care to remain in the room. She
argued that where one stone had come another might
follow. She therefore insisted on her room being
changed. The servants said that there was no
other room available with a dressing-room and
bath-room attached, and your daughter made a point
of these matters. I at once offered to exchange
apartments with her. She did me the honour to
accept my offer. Our respective belongings were
moved - and that is all. Miss Racksole is at this
moment, I trust, asleep in No. 124.'

Theodore Racksole looked at the young man for a
few seconds
in silence.

There was a faint knock at the door.

'Come in,' said Racksole loudly.

Someone pushed open the door, but remained
standing on the mat. It was Nella's maid, in a
dressing-gown.

'Miss Racksole's compliments, and a thousand
excuses, but a book of hers was left on the
mantelshelf in this room. She cannot sleep, and
wishes to read.'

'Mr Dimmock, I tender my apologies - my formal
apologies,' said Racksole, when the girl had gone
away with the book. 'Good night.'

'Pray don't mention it,' said Dimmock suavely -
and bowed him out.

Chapter Four

ENTRANCE OF THE PRINCE

NEVERTHELESS, sundry small things
weighed on Racksole's mind. First there was
Jules' wink. Then there was the ribbon on the
door-handle and Jules' visit to No. 111, and the
broken window - broken from the outside. Racksole
did not forget that the time was 3 a.m. He slept
but little that night, but he was glad that he had
bought the Grand Babylon Hotel. It was an
acquisition which seemed to promise fun and
diversion.

The next morning he came across Mr Babylon
early. 'I have emptied my private room of all
personal papers,' said Babylon, 'and it is now at
your disposal. I purpose, if agreeable to
yourself, to stay on in the hotel as a guest for
the present. We have much to settle with regard
to the completion of the purchase, and also there
are things which you might want to ask me. Also,
to tell the truth, I am not anxious to leave the
old place with too much suddenness. It will be a
wrench to me.'

'I shall be delighted if you will stay,' said
the millionaire, 'but it must be as my guest, not
as the guest of the hotel.'

'You are very kind.'

'As for wishing to consult you, no doubt I
shall have need to do so, but I must say that the
show seems to run itself.'

'Ah!' said Babylon thoughtfully. 'I have heard
of hotels that run themselves. If they do, you
may be sure that they obey the laws of gravity and
run downwards. You will have your hands full.
For example, have you yet heard about Miss
Spencer?'

'No,' said Racksole. 'What of her?'

'She has mysteriously vanished during the
night, and nobody appears to be able to throw any
light on the affair. Her room is empty, her boxes
gone. You will want someone to take her place,
and that someone will not be very easy to get.'

'H'm!' Racksole said, after a pause. 'Hers is
not the only post that falls vacant to-day.'

A little later, the millionaire installed
himself in the late owner's private room and rang
the bell.

'I want Jules,' he said to the page.

While waiting for Jules, Racksole considered
the question of Miss Spencer's disappearance.

'Good morning, Jules,' was his cheerful
greeting, when the imperturbable waiter arrived.

'You are aware, of course, that Mr Babylon has
transferred all his interests in this hotel to
me?'

'I have been informed to that effect, sir.'

'I suppose you know everything that goes on in
the hotel, Jules?'

'As the head waiter, sir, it is my business to
keep a general eye on things.'

'You speak very good English for a foreigner,
Jules.'

'For a foreigner, sir! I am an Englishman, a
Hertfordshire man born and bred. Perhaps my name
has misled you, sir. I am only called Jules
because the head waiter of any really high-class
hotel must have either a French or an Italian
name.'

'I see,' said Racksole. 'I think you must be
rather a clever person, Jules.'

'That is not for me to say, sir.'

'How long has the hotel enjoyed the advantage
of your services?'

'A little over twenty years.'

'That is a long time to be in one place. Don't
you think it's time you got out of the rut? You
are still young, and might make a reputation for
yourself in another and wider sphere.'

Racksole looked at the man steadily, and his
glance was steadily returned.

'You aren't satisfied with me, sir?'

'To be frank, Jules, I think - I think you - er
- wink too much. And I think that it is
regrettable when a head waiter falls into a habit
of taking white ribbons from the handles of
bedroom doors at three in the morning.'

Jules started slightly.

'I see how it is, sir. You wish me to go, and
one pretext, if I may use the term, is as good as
another. Very well, I can't say that I'm
surprised. It sometimes happens that there is
incompatibility of temper between a hotel
proprietor and his head waiter, and then, unless
one of them goes, the hotel is likely to suffer.
I will go, Mr Racksole. In fact, I had already
thought of giving notice.'

The millionaire smiled appreciatively. 'What
wages do you require in lieu of notice? It is my
intention that you leave the hotel within an
hour.'

'I require no wages in lieu of notice, sir. I
would scorn to accept anything. And I will leave
the hotel in fifteen minutes.'

'Good-day, then. You have my good wishes and
my admiration, so long as you keep out of my
hotel.'

Racksole got up. 'Good-day, sir. And thank
you.'

'By the way, Jules, it will be useless for you
to apply to any other first-rate European hotel
for a post, because I shall take measures which
will ensure the rejection of any such
application.'

'Without discussing the question whether or not
there aren't at least half a dozen hotels in
London alone that would jump for joy at the chance
of getting me,' answered Jules, 'I may tell you,
sir, that I shall retire from my profession.'

'Really! You will turn your brains to a
different channel.'

'No, sir. I shall take rooms in Albemarle
Street or Jermyn Street, and just be content to be
a man-about-town. I have saved some twenty
thousand pounds - a mere trifle, but sufficient
for my needs, and I shall now proceed to enjoy it.
Pardon me for troubling you with my personal
affairs. And good-day again.'

That afternoon Racksole went with Félix
Babylon first to a firm of solicitors in the City,
and then to a stockbroker, in order to carry out
the practical details of the purchase of the
hotel.

'I mean to settle in England,' said Racksole,
as they were coming back. 'It is the only country
- ' and he stopped.

'The only country?'

'The, only country where you can invest money
and spend money with a feeling of security. In
the United States there is nothing worth spending
money on, nothing to buy. In France or Italy,
there is no real security.'

'But surely you are a true American?'
questioned Babylon.

'I am a true American,' said Racksole, 'but my
father, who began by being a bedmaker at an Oxford
college, and ultimately made ten million dollars
out of iron in Pittsburg - my father took the wise
precaution of having me educated in England. I
had my three years at Oxford, like any son of the
upper middle class! It did me good. It has been
worth more to me than many successful
speculations. It taught me that the English
language is different from, and better than, the
American language, and that there is something - I
haven't yet found out exactly what - in English
life that Americans will never get. Why,' he
added, 'in the United States we still bribe our
judges and our newspapers. And we talk of the
eighteenth century as though it was the beginning
of the world. Yes, I shall transfer my securities
to London. I shall build a house in Park Lane,
and I shall buy some immemorial country seat with
a history as long as the A. T. and S. railroad,
and I shall calmly and gradually settle down.
D'you know - I am rather a good-natured man for a
millionaire, and of a social disposition, and yet
I haven't six real friends in the whole of New
York City. Think of that!'

'And I,' said Babylon, 'have no friends except
the friends of my boyhood in Lausanne. I have
spent thirty years in England, and gained nothing
but a perfect knowledge of the English language
and as much gold coin as would fill a rather large
box.'

These two plutocrats breathed a simultaneous
sigh.

'Talking of gold coin,' said Racksole, 'how
much money should you think Jules has contrived to
amass while he has been with you?'

'Oh!' Babylon smiled. 'I should not like to
guess. He has had unique opportunities -
opportunities.'

'Should you consider twenty thousand an
extraordinary sum under the circumstances?'

'Not at all. Has he been confiding in you?'

'Somewhat. I have dismissed him.'

'You have dismissed him?'

'Why not?'

'There is no reason why not. But I have felt
inclined to dismiss him for the past ten years,
and never found courage to do it.'

'It was a perfectly simple proceeding, I assure
you. Before I had done with him, I rather liked
the fellow.'

'Miss Spencer and Jules - both gone in one
day!' mused Félix Babylon.

'And no one to take their places,' said
Racksole. 'And yet the hotel continues its way!'

But when Racksole reached the Grand Babylon he
found that Miss Spencer's chair in the bureau was
occupied by a stately and imperious girl, dressed
becomingly in black.

'Heavens, Nella!' he cried, going to the
bureau. 'What are you doing here?'

'I am taking Mis Spencer's place. I want to
help you with your hotel, Dad. I fancy I shall
make an excellent hotel clerk. I have arranged
with a Miss Selina Smith, one of the typists in
the office, to put me up to all the tips and
tricks, and I shall do very well.'

'But look here, Helen Racksole. We shall have
the whole of London talking about this thing - the
greatest of all American heiresses a hotel clerk!
And I came here for quiet and rest!'

'I suppose it was for the sake of quiet and
rest that you bought the hotel, Papa?'

'You would insist on the steak,' he retorted.
'Get out of this, on the instant.'

'Here I am, here to stay,' said Nella, and
deliberately laughed at her parent.

Just then the face of a fair-haired man of
about thirty years appeared at the bureau window.
He was very well-dressed, very aristocratic in his
pose, and he seemed rather angry.

He looked fixedly at Nella and started back.

'Ach!' he exclaimed. 'You!'

'Yes, your Highness, it is indeed I. Father,
this is his Serene Highness Prince Aribert of
Posen - one of our most esteemed customers.'

'Silence,' he entreated, with a wave of the
hand, and his forehead went as white as paper.

Chapter Five

WHAT OCCURRED TO REGINALD DIMMOCK

IN another moment they were all three
talking quite nicely, and with at any rate an
appearance of being natural. Prince Aribert
became suave, even deferential to Nella, and more
friendly towards Nella's father than their
respective positions demanded. The latter amused
himself by studying this sprig of royalty, the
first with whom he had ever come into contact. He
decided that the young fellow was personable
enough, 'had no frills on him,' and would make an
exceptionally good commercial traveller for a
first-class firm. Such was Theodore Racksole's
preliminary estimate of the man who might one day
be the reigning Grand Duke of Posen.

It occurred to Nella, and she smiled at the
idea, that the bureau of the hotel was scarcely
the correct place in which to receive this august
young man. There he stood, with his head half-way
through the bureau window, negligently leaning
against the woodwork, just as though he were a
stockbroker or the manager of a New York burlesque
company.

'Is your Highness travelling quite alone?' she
asked.

'By a series of accidents I am,' he said. 'My
equerry was to have met me at Charing Cross, but
he failed to do so - I cannot imagine why.'

'Mr Dimmock?' questioned Racksole.

'Yes, Dimmock. I do not remember that he ever
missed an appointment before. You know him? He
has been here?'

'He dined with us last night,' said Racksole -
'on Nella's invitation,' he added maliciously;
'but to-day we have seen nothing of him. I know,
however, that he has engaged the State apartments,
and also a suite adjoining the State apartments
- No. 55. That is so, isn't it, Nella?'

'Yes, Papa,' she said, having first demurely
examined a ledger. 'Your Highness would doubtless
like to be conducted to your room - apartments I
mean.' Then Nella laughed deliberately at the
Prince, and said, 'I don't know who is the proper
person to conduct you, and that's a fact. The
truth is that Papa and I are rather raw yet in the
hotel line. You see, we only bought the place
last night.'

'You have bought the hotel!' exclaimed the
Prince.

'That's so,' said Racksole.

'And Félix Babylon has gone?'

'He is going, if he has not already gone.'

'Ah! I see,' said the Prince; 'this is one of
your American "strokes". You have bought to sell
again, is that not it? You are on your holidays,
but you cannot resist making a few thousands by
way of relaxation. I have heard of such things.'

'We sha'n't sell again, Prince, until we are
tired of our bargain. Sometimes we tire very
quickly, and sometimes we don't. It depends - eh?
What?' Racksole broke off suddenly to attend to a
servant in livery who had quietly entered the
bureau and was making urgent mysterious signs to
him.

'How do you know the rule is so strict if you
only came into possession last night?'

'I know because I made the rule myself this
morning, your Highness.'

'But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk
to you.'

'Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or
as the friend - the acquaintance - whom I knew in
Paris' last year?'

'As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the
term.'

'And you are sure that you would not like first
to be conducted to your apartments?'

'Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he
cannot fail to be here soon.'

'Then we will have tea served in father's
private room - the proprietor's private room, you
know.'

'Good!' he said.

Nella talked through a telephone, and rang
several bells, and behaved generally in a manner
calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever it
might concern that she was a young woman of
business instincts and training, and then she
stepped down from her chair of office, emerged
from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led
Prince Aribert to the Louis XV chamber in which
her father and Félix Babylon had had their
long confabulation on the previous evening.

'What do you want to talk to me about?' she
asked her companion, as she poured out for him a
second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for a
moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a
young man of sane, healthy, instincts, he could
think of nothing for the moment except her
loveliness. Nella was indeed beautiful that
afternoon. The beauty of even the most beautiful
woman ebbs and flows from hour to hour. Nella's
this afternoon was at the flood. Vivacious,
alert, imperious, and yet ineffably sweet, she
seemed to radiate the very joy and exuberance of
life.

'I have forgotten,' he said.

'You have forgotten! That is surely very wrong
of you? You gave me to understand that it was
something terribly important. But of course I
knew it couldn't be, because no man, and
especially no Prince, ever discussed anything
really important with a woman.'

'Recollect, Miss Racksole, that this aftemoon,
here, I am not the Prince.'

'You are Count Steenbock, is that it?'

He started. 'For you only,' he said,
unconsciously lowering his voice. 'Miss Racksole,
I particularly wish that no one here should know
that I was in Paris last spring.'

'An affair of State?' she smiled.

'An affair of State,' he replied soberly.
'Even Dimmock doesn't know. It was strange that
we should be fellow guests at that quiet
out-of-the-way hotel - strange but delightful. I
shall never forget that rainy afternoon that we
spent together in the Museum of the
Trocadéro. Let us talk about that.'

'About the rain, or the museum?'

'I shall never forget that afternoon,' he
repeated, ignoring the lightness of her question.

'Nor I,' she murmured corresponding to his
mood.

'You, too enjoyed it?' he said eagerly.

'The sculptures were magnificent,' she replied,
hastily glancing at the ceiling.

'Ah! So they were! Tell me, Miss Racksole,
how did you discover my identity.'

'I must not say,' she answered. 'That is my
secret. Do not seek to penetrate it. Who knows
what horrors you might discover if you probed too
far?' She laughed, but she laughed alone. The
Prince remained pensive - as it were brooding.

'I never hoped to see you again,' he said.

'Why not?'

'One never sees again those whom one wishes to
see.'

'As for me, I was perfectly convinced that we
should meet again.'

'Why?'

'Because I always get what I want.'

'Then you wanted to see me again?'

'Certainly. You interested me extremely. I
have never met another man who could talk so well
about sculpture as the Count Steenbock.'

'Do you really always get what you want, Miss
Racksole?'

'Of course.'

'That is because your father is so rich, I
suppose?'

'Oh, no, it isn't!' she said. 'It's simply
because I always do get what I want. It's got
nothing to do with Father at all.'

'But Mr Racksole is extremely wealthy?'

'Wealthy isn't the word, Count. There is no
word. It's positively awful the amount of dollars
poor Papa makes. And the worst of it is he can't
help it. He told me once that when a man had made
ten millions no power on earth could stop those
ten millions from growing into twenty. And so it
continues. I spend what I can, but I can't come
near coping with it; and of course Papa is no use
whatever at spending.'

'Pardon me,' he said; 'you have, and the time
is coming when you will feel them.'

'I'm only a girl,' she murmured with sudden
simplicity. 'As for you, Count, surely you have
sufficient responsibilities of your own?'

'I?' he said sadly. 'I have no
responsibilties. I am a nobody - a Serene
Highness who has to pretend to be very important,
always taking immense care never to do anything
that a Serene Highness ought not to do. Bah!'

'But if your nephew, Prince Eugen, were to die,
would you not come to the throne, and would you
not then have these responsibilities which you so
much desire?'

'Eugen die?' said Prince Aribert, in a curious
tone. 'Impossible. He is the perfection of
health. In three months he will be married. No,
I shall never be anything but a Serene Highness,
the most despicable of God's creatures.'

'But what about the State secret which you
mentioned? Is not that a responsibility?'

'Ah!' he said. 'That is over. That belongs to
the past. It was an accident in my dull career.
I shall never be Count Steenbock again.'

'See!' answered the Prince, standing up and
bending over her. 'I am going to confide in you.
I don't know why, but I am.'

'Don't betray State secrets,' she warned him,
smiling into his face.

But just then the door of the room was
unceremoniously opened.

'Go right in,' said a voice sharply. It was
Theodore Racksole's. Two men entered, bearing a
prone form on a stretcher, and Racksole followed
them. Nella sprang up. Racksole stared to see
his daughter.

'I didn't know you were in here, Nell. Here,'
to the two men, 'out again.'

'Why!' exclaimed Nella, gazing fearfully at the
form on the stretcher, 'it's Mr Dimmock!'

'It is,' her father acquiesced. 'He's dead,'
he added laconically. 'I'd have broken it to you
more gently had I known. Your pardon, Prince.'
There was a pause.

'Dimmock dead!' Prince Aribert whispered under
his breath, and he kneeled down by the side of the
stretcher. 'What does this mean?'

The poor fellow was just walking across the
quadrangle towards the portico when he fell down.
A commissionaire who saw him says he was walking
very quickly. At first I thought it was
sunstroke, but it couldn't have been, though the
weather certainly is rather warm. It must be
heart disease. But anyhow, he's dead. We did
what we could. I've sent for a doctor, and for
the police. I suppose there'll have to be an
inquest.'

Theodore Racksole stopped, and in an awkward
solemn silence they all gazed at the dead youth.
His features were slightly drawn, and his eyes
closed; that was all. He might have been asleep.

'My poor Dimmock!' exclaimed the Prince, his
voice broken. 'And I was angry because the lad
did not meet me at Charing Cross!'

'Are you sure he is dead, Father?' Nella said.

'You'd better go away, Nella,' was Racksole's
only reply; but the girl stood still, and began to
sob quietly. On the previous night she had
secretly made fun of Reginald Dimmock. She had
deliberately set herself to get information from
him on a topic in which she happened to be
specially interested and she had got it, laughing
the while at his youthful crudities - his vanity,
his transparent cunning, his abusurd airs. She
had not liked him; she had even distrusted him,
and decided that he was not 'nice'. But now, as
he lay on the stretcher, these things were
forgotten. She went so far as to reproach herself
for them. Such is the strange commanding power of
death.

'Oblige me by taking the poor fellow to my
apartments,' said the Prince, with a gesture to
the attendants. 'Surely it is time the doctor
came.' Racksole felt suddenly at that moment he
was nothing but a mere hotel proprietor with an
awkward affair on his hands. For a fraction of a
second he wished he had never bought the Grand
Babylon.

A quarter of an hour later Prince Aribert,
Theodore Racksole, a doctor, and an inspector of
police were in the Prince's reception-room. They
had just come from an ante-chamber, in which lay
the mortal remains of Reginald Dimmock.

'Well?' said Racksole, glancing at the doctor.

The doctor was a big, boyish-looking man, with
keen, quizzical eyes.

'It is not heart disease,' said the doctor.

'Not heart disease?'

'No.'

'Then what is it?' asked the Prince.

'I may be able to answer that question after
the post-mortem,' said the doctor. 'I certainly
can't answer it now. The symptoms are unusual to
a degree.'

The inspector of police began to write in a
note-book.

Chapter Six

IN THE GOLD ROOM

AT the Grand Babylon a great ball was
given that night in the Gold Room, a huge saloon
attached to the hotel, though scarcely part of it,
and certainly less exclusive than the hotel
itself. Theodore Racksole knew nothing of the
affair, except that it was an entertainment
offered by a Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi to their
friends. Who Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi were he did
not know, nor could anyone tell him anything about
them except that Mr Sampson Levi was a prominent
member of that part of the Stock Exchange
familiarly called the Kaffir Circus, and that his
wife was a stout lady with an aquiline nose and
many diamonds, and that they were very rich and
very hospitable. Theodore Racksole did not want a
ball in his hotel that evening, and just before
dinner he had almost a mind to issue a decree that
the Gold Room was to be closed and the ball
forbidden, and Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi might name
the amount of damages suffered by them. His
reasons for such a course were threefold - first,
he felt depressed and uneasy; second, he didn't
like the name of Sampson Levi; and, third, he had
a desire to show these so-called plutocrats that
their wealth was nothing to him, that they could
not do what they chose with Theodore Racksole, and
that for two pins Theodore Racksole would buy them
up, and the whole Kaffir Circus to boot. But
something wamed him that though such a high-handed
proceeding might be tolerated in America, that
land of freedom, it would never be tolerated in
England. He felt instinctively that in England
there are things you can't do, and that this
particular thing was one of them. So the ball
went forward, and neither Mr nor Mrs Sampson Levi
had ever the least suspicion what a narrow escape
they had had of looking very foolish in the eyes
of the thousand or so guests invited by them to
the Gold Room of the Grand Babylon that evening.

The Gold Room of the Grand Babylon was built
for a ballroom. A balcony, supported by arches
faced with gilt and lapis-lazulo, ran around it,
and from this vantage men and maidens and
chaperons who could not or would not dance might
survey the scene. Everyone knew this, and most
people took advantage of it. What everyone did
not know - what no one knew - was that higher up
than the balcony there was a little barred window
in the end wall from which the hotel authorities
might keep a watchful eye, not only on the
dancers, but on the occupants of the balcony
itself.

It may seem incredible to the uninitiated that
the guests at any social gathering held in so
gorgeous and renowned an apartment as the Gold
Room of the Grand Babylon should need the
observation of a watchful eye. Yet so it was.
Strange matters and unexpected faces had been
descried from the little window, and more than one
European detective had kept vigil there with the
most eminently satisfactory results.

At eleven o'clock Theodore Racksole, afflicted
by vexation of spirit, found himself gazing idly
through the little barred window. Nella was with
him. Together they had been wandering about the
corridors of the hotel, still strange to them
both, and it was quite by accident that they had
lighted upon the small room which had a
surreptitious view of Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi's
ball. Except for the light of the chandelier of
the ball-room the little cubicle was in darkness.
Nella was looking through the window; her father
stood behind.

'I wonder which is Mrs Sampson Levi?' Nella
said, 'and whether she matches her name. Wouldn't
you love to have a name like that, Father -
something that people could take hold of - instead
of Racksole?'

The sound of violins and a confused murmur of
voices rose gently up to them.

'Umphl' said Theodore. 'Curse those evening
papers!' he added, inconsequently but with
sincerity.

'Father, you're very horrid to-night. What
have the evening papers been doing?'

'Well, my young madame, they've got me in for
one, and you for another; and they're
manufacturing mysteries like fun. It's young
Dimmock's death that has started 'em.'

'Well, Father, you surely didn't expect to keep
yourself out of the papers. Besides, as regards
newspapers, you ought to be glad you aren't in New
York. Just fancy what the dear old
Herald would have made out of a
little transaction like yours of last night'

'That's true,' assented Racksole. 'But it'll
be all over New York to-morrow morning, all the
same. The worst of it is that Babylon has gone
off to Switzerland.'

'Why?'

'Don't know. Sudden fancy, I guess, for his
native heath.'

'What difference does it make to you?'

'None. Only I feel sort of lonesome. I feel I
want someone to lean up against in running this
hotel.'

'Father, if you have that feeling you must be
getting ill.'

'Yes,' he sighed, 'I admit it's unusual with
me. But perhaps you haven't grasped the fact,
Nella, that we're in the middle of a rather queer
business.'

'You mean about poor Mr Dimmock?'

'Partly Dimmock and partly other things. First
of all, that Miss Spencer, or whatever her
wretched name is, mysteriously disappears. Then
there was the stone thrown into your bedroom.
Then I caught that rascal Jules conspiring with
Dimmock at three o'clock in the morning. Then
your precious Prince Aribert arrives without any
suite - which I believe is a most peculiar and
wicked thing for a Prince to do - and moreover I
find my daughter on very intimate terms with the
said Prince. Then young Dimmock goes and dies,
and there is to be an inquest; then Prince Eugen
and his suite, who were expected here for dinner,
fail to turn up at all - '

'Prince Eugen has not come?'

'He has not; and Uncle Aribert is in a deuce of
a stew about him, and telegraphing all over
Europe. Altogether, things are working up pretty
lively.'

'Do you really think, Dad, there was anything
between Jules and poor Mr Dimmock?'

'Think! I know! I tell you I saw that scamp
give Dimmock a wink last night at dinner that
might have meant - well!'

'So you caught that wink, did you, Dad?'

'Why, did you?'

'Of course, Dad. I was going to tell you about
it.'

The millionaire grunted.

'Look here, Father,' Nella whispered suddenly,
and pointed to the balcony immediately below them.
'Who's that?' She indicated a man with a bald
patch on the back of his head, who was propping
himself up against the railing of the balcony and
gazing immovable into the ball-room.

'Well, who is it?'

'Isn't it Jules?'

'Gemini! By the beard of the prophet, it is!'

'Perhaps Mr Jules is a guest of Mrs Sampson
Levi.'

'Guest or no guest, he goes out of this hotel,
even if I have to throw him out myself.'

Theodore Racksole disappeared without another
word, and Nella followed him. But when the
millionaire arrived on the balcony floor he could
see nothing of Jules, neither there nor in the
ball-room itself. Saying no word aloud, but
quietly whispering wicked expletives, he searched
everywhere in vain, and then, at last, by tortuous
stairways and corridors returned to his original
post of observation, that he might survey the
place anew from the vantage ground. To his
surprise he found a man in the dark little room,
watching the scene of the ball as intently as he
himself had been doing a few minutes before.
Hearing footsteps, the man turned with a start.

It was Jules.

The two exchanged glances in the half light for
a second.

'Good evening, Mr Racksole,' said Jules calmly.
'I must apologize for being here.'

'Force of habit, I suppose,' said Theodore
Racksole drily.

'Just so, sir.'

'I fancied I had forbidden you to re-enter this
hotel?'

'I thought your order applied only to my
professional capacity. I am here to-night as the
guest of Mr and Mrs Sampson Levi.'

'In your new rôle of man-about-town, eh?'

'Exactly.'

'But I don't allow men-about-town up here, my
friend.'

'For being up here I have already apologized.'

'Then, having apologized, you had better
depart; that is my disinterested advice to you.'

'Good night, sir.'

'And, I say, Mr Jules, if Mr and Mrs Sampson
Levi, or any other Hebrews or Christians, should
again invite you to my hotel you will oblige me by
declining the invitation. You'll find that will
be the safest course for you.'

'Good night, sir.'

Before midnight struck Theodore Racksole had
ascertained that the invitation-list of Mr and Mrs
Sampson Levi, though a somewhat lengthy one,
contained no reference to any such person as
Jules.

He sat up very late. To be precise, he sat up
all night. He was a man who, by dint of training,
could comfortably dispense with sleep when he felt
so inclined, or when circumstances made such a
course advisable. He walked to and fro in his
room, and cogitated as few people beside Theodore
Racksole could cogitate. At 6 a.m. he took a
stroll round the business part of his premises,
and watched the supplies come in from Covent
Garden, from Smithfield, from Billingsgate, and
from other strange places. He found the
proceedings of the kitchen department quite
interesting, and made mental notes of things that
he would have altered, of men whose wages he would
increase and men whose wages he would reduce. At
7 a.m. he happened to be standing near the
luggage lift, and witnessed the descent of vast
quantities of luggage, and its disappearance into
a Carter Paterson van.

'Whose luggage is that?' he inquired
peremptorily.

The luggage clerk, with an aggrieved
expression, explained to him that it was the
luggage of nobody in particular, that it belonged
to various guests, and was bound for various
destinations; that it was, in fact, 'expressed'
luggage despatched in advance, and that a similar
quantity of it left the hotel every morning about
that hour.

Theodore Racksole walked away, and breakfasted
upon one cup of tea and half a slice of toast.

At ten o'clock he was informed that the
inspector of police desired to see him. The
inspector had come, he said, to superintend the
removal of the body of Reginald Dimmock to the
mortuary adjoining the place of inquest, and a
suitable vehicle waited at the back entrance of
the hotel.

The inspector had also brought subpoenas for
himself and Prince Aribert of Posen and the
commissionaire to attend the inquest.

The inspector gave the least hint of a
professional smile, and Racksole, disgusted, told
him curtly to go and perform his duties.

In a few minutes a message came from the
inspector requesting Mr Racksole to be good enough
to come to him on the first floor. Racksole went.
In the ante-room, where the body of Reginald
Dimmock had originally been placed, were the
inspector and Prince Aribert, and two policemen.

'Well?' said Racksole, after he and the Prince
had exchanged bows. Then he saw a coffin laid
across two chairs. 'I see a coffin has been
obtained,' he remarked. 'Quite right' He
approached it. 'It's empty,' he observed
unthinkingly.

'Just so,' said the inspector. 'The body of
the deceased has disappeared. And his Serene
Highness Prince Aribert informs me that though he
has occupied a room immediately opposite, on the
other side of the corridor, he can throw no light
on the affair.'

'Indeed, I cannot!' said the Prince, and though
he spoke with sufficient calmness and dignity, you
could see that he was deeply pained, even
distressed.

'Well, I'm - ' murmured Racksole, and stopped.

Chapter Seven

NELLA AND THE PRINCE

IT appeared impossible to Theodore
Racksole that so cumbrous an article as a corpse
could be removed out of his hotel, with no trace,
no hint, no clue as to the time or the manner of
the performance of the deed. After the first
feeling of surprise, Racksole grew coldly and
severely angry. He had a mind to dismiss the
entire staff of the hotel. He personally examined
the night-watchman, the chambermaids and all other
persons who by chance might or ought to know
something of the affair; but without avail. The
corpse of Reginald Dimmock had vanished utterly -
disappeared like a fleshless spirit. Of course
there were the police. But Theodore Racksole held
the police in sorry esteem. He acquainted them
with the facts, answered their queries with a
patient weariness, and expected, nothing whatever
from that quarter. He also had several interviews
with Prince Aribert of Posen, but though the
Prince was suavity itself and beyond doubt
genuinely concerned about the fate of his dead
attendant, yet it seemed to Racksole that he was
keeping something back, that he hesitated to say
all he knew. Racksole, with characteristic
insight, decided that the death of Reginald
Dimmock was only a minor event, which had
occurred, as it were, on the fringe of some far
more profound mystery. And, therefore, he decided
to wait, with his eyes very wide open, until
something else happened that would throw light on
the business. At the moment he took only one
measure - he arranged that the theft of Dimmock's
body should not appear in the newspapers. It is
astonishing how well a secret can be kept, when
the possessors of the secret are handled with the
proper mixture of firmness and persuasion.
Racksole managed this very neatly. It was a
complicated job, and his success in it rather
pleased him.

At the same time he was conscious of being
temporarily worsted by an unknown group of
schemers, in which he felt convinced that Jules
was an important item. He could scarcely look
Nella in the eyes. The girl had evidently
expected him to unmask this conspiracy at once,
with a single stroke of the millionaire's magic
wand. She was thoroughly accustomed, in the land
of her birth, to seeing him achieve impossible
feats. Over there he was a 'boss'; men trembled
before his name; when he wished a thing to happen
- well, it happened; if he desired to know a
thing, he just knew it. But here, in London,
Theodore Racksole was not quite the same Theodore
Racksole. He dominated New York; but London, for
the most part, seemed not to take much interest in
him; and there were certainly various persons in
London who were capable of snapping their fingers
at him - at Theodore Racksole. Neither he nor his
daughter could get used to that fact.

As for Nella, she concerned herself for a
little with the ordinary business of the bureau,
and watched the incomings and outgoings of Prince
Aribert with a kindly interest. She perceived,
what her father had failed to perceive, that His
Highness had assumed an attitude of reserve merely
to hide the secret distraction and dismay which
consumed him. She saw that the poor fellow had no
settled plan in his head, and that he was troubled
by something which, so far, he had confided to
nobody. It came to her knowledge that each
morning he walked to and fro on the Victoria
Embankment, alone, and apparently with no object.
On the third morning she decided that driving
exercise on the Embankment would be good for her
health, and thereupon ordered a carriage and
issued forth, arrayed in a miraculous
putty-coloured gown. Near Blackfriars Bridge she
met the Prince, and the carriage was drawn up by
the pavement.

'Good morning, Prince,' she greeted him. 'Are
you mistaking this for Hyde Park?'

He bowed and smiled.

'I usually walk here in the mornings,' he said.

'You surprise me,' she returned. 'I thought I
was the only person in London who preferred the
Embankment, with this view of the river, to the
dustiness of Hyde Park. I can't imagine how it is
that London will never take exercise anywhere
except in that ridiculous Park. Now, if they had
Central Park - '

'I think the Embankment is the finest spot in
all London,' he said.

She leaned a little out of the landau, bringing
her face nearer to his.

'I do believe we are kindred spirits, you and
I,' she murmured; and then, 'Au revoir, Prince!'

'One moment, Miss Racksole.' His quick tones
had a note of entreaty.

'I am in a hurry,' she fibbed; 'I am not merely
taking exercise this morning. You have no idea
how busy we are.'

'Ah! then I will not trouble you. But I leave
the Grand Babylon to-night'

'Do you?' she said. 'Then will your Highness
do me the honour of lunching with me today in
Father's room? Father will be out - he is having
a day in the City with some stockbroking persons.'

'I shall be charmed,' said the Prince, and his
face showed that he meant it.

Nella drove off.

If the lunch was a success that result was due
partly to Rocco, and partly to Nella. The Prince
said little beyond what the ordinary rules of the
conversational game demanded. His hostess talked
much and talked well, but she failed to rouse her
guest. When they had had coffee he took a rather
formal leave of her.

'Good-bye, Prince,' she said, 'but I thought -
that is, no I didn't. Good-bye.'

'You thought I wished to discuss something with
you. I did; but I have decided that I have no
right to burden your mind with my affairs.'

'Why should I weary you with my confidences?'
he said. 'I don't know, I cannot tell; but I feel
that I must. I feel that you will understand me
better than anyone else in the world. And yet why
should you understand me? Again, I don't know.
Miss Racksole, I will disclose to you the whole
trouble in a word. Prince Eugen, the hereditary
Grand Duke of Posen, has disappeared. Four days
ago I was to have met him at Ostend. He had
affairs in London. He wished me to come with him.
I sent Dimmock on in front, and waited for Eugen.
He did not arrive. I telegraphed back to Cologne,
his last stopping-place, and I learned that he had
left there in accordance with his programme; I
leamed also that he had passed through Brussels.
It must have been between Brussels and the railway
station at Ostend Quay that he disappeared. He
was travelling with a single equerry, and the
equerry, too, has vanished. I need not explain to
you, Miss Racksole, that when a person of the
importance of my nephew contrives to get lost one
must proceed cautiously. One cannot advertise for
him in the London Times. Such a disappearance
must be kept secret. The people at Posen and at
Berlin believe that Eugen is in London, here, at
this hotel; or, rather, they did so believe. But
this morning I received a cypher telegram from -
from His Majesty the Emperor, a very peculiar
telegram, asking when Eugen might be expected to
return to Posen, and requesting that he should go
first to Berlin. That telegram was addressed to
myself. Now, if the Emperor thought that Eugen
was here, why should he have caused the telegram
to be addressed to me? I have hesitated for three
days, but I can hesitate no longer. I must myself
go to the Emperor and acquaint him with the
facts.'

'I suppose you've just got to keep straight
with him?' Nella was on the point of saying, but
she checked herself and substituted, 'The Emperor
is your chief, is he not? "First among equals",
you call him.'

'His Majesty is our over-lord,' said Aribert
quietly.

'Why do you not take immediate steps to inquire
as to the whereabouts of your Royal nephew?' she
asked simply. The affair seemed to her just then
so plain and straightforward.

'Because one of two things may have happened.
Either Eugen may have been, in plain language,
abducted, or he may have had his own reasons for
changing his programme and keeping in the
background - out of reach of telegraph and post
and railways.'

'What sort of reasons?'

'Do not ask me. In the history of every family
there are passages - ' He stopped.

'And what was Prince Eugen's object in coming
to London?'

Aribert hesitated.

'Money,' he said at length. 'As a family we
are very poor - poorer than anyone in Berlin
suspects.'

'Prince Aribert,' Nella said, 'shall I tell you
what I think?' She leaned back in her chair, and
looked at him out of half-closed eyes. His pale,
thin, distinguished face held her gaze as if by
some fascination. There could be no mistaking
this man for anything else but a Prince.

'If you will,' he said.

'Prince Eugen is the victim of a plot.'

'You think so?'

'I am perfectly convinced of it.'

'But why? What can be the object of a plot
against him?'

'That is a point of which you should know more
than me,' she remarked drily.

'There are several reasons, and they are
connected with Mr Dimmock. Did you ever suspect,
your Highness, that that poor young man was not
entirely loyal to you?'

'He was absolutely loyal,' said the Prince,
with all the earnestness of conviction.

'A thousand pardons, but he was not.'

'Miss Racksole, if any other than yourself made
that assertion, I would - I would - '

'Consign them to the deepest dungeon in Posen?'
she laughed, lightly. 'Listen.' And she told him
of the incidents which had occurred in the night
preceding his arrival in the hotel.

'Do you mean, Miss Racksole, that there was an
understanding between poor Dimmock and this fellow
Jules?'

'There was an understanding.'

'Impossible!'

'Your Highness, the man who wishes to probe a
mystery to its root never uses the word
"impossible". But I will say this for young Mr
Dimmock. I think he repented, and I think that it
was because he repented that he - er - died so
suddenly, and that his body was spirited away.'

'Why has no one told me these things before?'
Aribert exclaimed.

'Princes seldom hear the truth,' she said.

He was astonished at her coolness, her firmness
of assertion, her air of complete acquaintance
with the world.

'Miss Racksole,' he said, 'if you will permit
me to say it, I have never in my life met a woman
like you. May I rely on your sympathy - your
support?'

'My support, Prince? But how?'

'I do not know,' he replied. 'But you could
help me if you would. A woman, when she has
brain, always has more brain than a man.'

'Ah!' she said ruefully, 'I have no brains, but
I do believe I could help you.'

What prompted her to make that assertion she
could not have explained, even to herself. But
she made it, and she had a suspicion - a
prescience - that it would be justified, though by
what means, through what good fortune, was still a
mystery to her.

'Go to Berlin,' she said. 'I see that you must
do that; you have no alternative. As for the
rest, we shall see. Something will occur. I
shall be here. My father will be here. You must
count us as your friends.'

He kissed her hand when he left, and
afterwards, when she was alone, she kissed the
spot his lips had touched again and again. Now,
thinking the matter out in the calmness of
solitude, all seemed strange, unreal, uncertain to
her. Were conspiracies actually possible
nowadays? Did queer things actually happen in
Europe? And did they actually happen in London
hotels? She dined with her father that night.

'I hear Prince Aribert has left,' said Theodore
Racksole.

'Yes,' she assented. She said not a word about
their interview.

Chapter Eight

ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE OF THE BARONESS

ON the following morning, just before
lunch, a lady, accompanied by a maid and a
considerable quantity of luggage, came to the
Grand Babylon Hotel. She was a plump, little old
lady, with white hair and an old-fashioned bonnet,
and she had a quaint, simple smile of surprise at
everything in general. Nevertheless, she gave the
impression of belonging to some aristocracy,
though not the English aristocracy. Her tone to
her maid, whom she addressed in broken English -
the girl being apparently English - was distinctly
insolent, with the calm, unconscious insolence
peculiar to a certain type of Continental
nobility. The name on the lady's card ran thus:
'Baroness Zerlinski'. She desired rooms on the
third floor. It happened that Nella was in the
bureau.

'On the third floor, madam?' questioned Nella,
in her best clerkly manner.

'I did say on de tird floor,' said the plump
little old lady.

'We have accommodation on the second floor.'

'I wish to be high up, out of de dust and in de
light,' explained the Baroness.

'We have no suites on the third floor, madam.'

'Never mind, no mattaire! Have you not two
rooms that communicate?'

Nella consulted her books, rather awkwardly.

'Numbers 122 and 123 communicate.'

'Or is it 121 and 122? the little old lady
remarked quickly, and then bit her lip.

'I beg your pardon. I should have said 121 and
122.'

At the moment Nella regarded the Baroness's
correction of her figures as a curious chance, but
afterwards, when the Baroness had ascended in the
lift, the thing struck her as somewhat strange.
Perhaps the Baroness Zerlinski had stayed at the
hotel before. For the sake of convenience an
index of visitors to the hotel was kept and the
index extended back for thirty years. Nella
examined it, but it did not contain the name of
Zerlinski. Then it was that Nella began to
imagine, what had swiftly crossed her mind when
first the Baroness presented herself at the
bureau, that the features of the Baroness were
remotely familiar to her. She thought, not that
she had seen the old lady's face before, but that
she had seen somewhere, some time, a face of a
similar cast. It occurred to Nella to look at the
'Almanach de Gotha' - that record of all the mazes
of Continental blue blood; but the 'Almanach de
Gotha' made no reference to any barony of
Zerlinski. Nella inquired where the Baroness
meant to take lunch, and was informed that a table
had been reserved for her in the dining-room, and
she at once decided to lunch in the dining-room
herself. Seated in a corner, half-hidden by a
pillar, she could survey all the guests, and watch
each group as it entered or left. Presently the
Baroness appeared, dressed in black, with a tiny
lace shawl, despite the June warmth; very stately,
very quaint, and gently smiling. Nella observed
her intently. The lady ate heartily, working
without haste and without delay through the
elaborate menu of the luncheon. Nella noticed
that she had beautiful white teeth. Then a
remarkable thing happened. A cream puff was
served to the Baroness by way of sweets, and Nella
was astonished to see the little lady remove the
top, and with a spoon quietly take something from
the interior which looked like a piece of folded
paper. No one who had not been watching with the
eye of a lynx would have noticed anything
extraordinary in the action; indeed, the chances
were nine hundred and ninety-nine to one that it
would pass unheeded. But, unfortunately for the
Baroness, it was the thousandth chance that
happened. Nella jumped up, and walking over to
the Baroness, said to her:

'I'm afraid that the tart is not quite nice,
your ladyship.'

'Thanks, it is delightful,' said the Baroness
coldly; her smile had vanished. 'Who are you? I
thought you were de bureau clerk.'

'My father is the owner of this hoteL I thought
there was something in the tart which ought not to
have been there.'

Nella looked the Baroness full in the face.
The piece of folded paper, to which a little cream
had attached itself, lay under the edge of a
plate.

'No, thanks.' The Baroness smiled her simple
smile.

Nella departed. She had noticed one trifling
thing besides the paper - namely, that the
Baroness could pronounce the English 'th' sound if
she chose.

That afternoon, in her own room, Nella sat
meditating at the window for long time, and then
she suddenly sprang up, her eyes brightening.

'I know,' she exclaimed, clapping her hands.
'It's Miss Spencer, disguised! Why didn't I think
of that before?' Her thoughts ran instantly to
Prince Aribert. 'Perhaps I can help him,' she
said to herself, and gave a little sigh. She went
down to the office and inquired whether the
Baroness had given any instructions about dinner.
She felt that some plan must be formulated. She
wanted to get hold of Rocco, and put him in the
rack. She knew now that Rocco, the unequalled,
was also concerned in this mysterious affair.

'The Baroness Zerlinski has left, about a
quarter of an hour ago,' said the attendant.

'But she only arrived this morning.'

'The Baroness's maid said that her mistress had
received a telegram and must leave at once. The
Baroness paid the bill, and went away in a
four-wheeler.'

'Where to?

'The trunks were labelled for Ostend.'

Perhaps it was instinct, perhaps it was the
mere spirit of adventure; but that evening Nella
was to be seen of all men on the steamer for
Ostend which leaves Dover at 11 p.m. She told no
one of her intentions - not even her father, who
was not in the hotel when she left. She had
scribbled a brief note to him to expect her back
in a day or two, and had posted this at Dover.
The steamer was the Marie Henriette, a large and
luxurious boat, whose state-rooms on deck vie with
the glories of the Cunard and White Star liners.
One of these state-rooms, the best, was evidently
occupied, for every curtain of its windows was
carefully drawn. Nella did not hope that the
Baroness was on board; it was quite possible for
the Baroness to have caught the eight o'clock
steamer, and it was also possible for the Baroness
not to have gone to Ostend at all, but to some
other place in an entirely different direction.
Nevertheless, Nella had a faint hope that the lady
who called herself Zerlinski might be in that
curtained stateroom, and throughout the smooth
moonlit voyage she never once relaxed her
observation of its doors and its windows.

The Maria Henriette arrived in Ostend Harbour
punctually at 2 a.m. in the morning. There was
the usual heterogeneous, gesticulating crowd on
the quay. Nella kept her post near the door of
the state-room, and at length she was rewarded by
seeing it open. Four middle-aged Englishmen
issued from it. From a glimpse of the interior
Nella saw that they had spent the voyage in
card-playing.

It would not be too much to say that she was
distinctly annoyed. She pretended to be annoyed
with circumstances, but really she was annoyed
with Nella Racksole. At two in the morning,
without luggage, without any companionship, and
without a plan of campaign, she found herself in a
strange foreign port - a port of evil repute,
possessing some of the worst-managed hotels in
Europe. She strolled on the quay for a few
minutes, and then she saw the smoke of another
steamer in the offing. She inquired from an
official what that steamer might be, and was told
that it was the eight o'clock from Dover, which
had broken down, put into Calais for some slight
necessary repairs, and was arriving at its
destination nearly four hours late. Her mercurial
spirits rose again. A minute ago she was
regarding herself as no better than a ninny
engaged in a wild-goose chase. Now she felt that
after all she had been very sagacious and cunning.
She was morally sure that she would find the
Zerlinski woman on this second steamer, and she
took all the credit to herself in advance. Such
is human nature.

The steamer seemed interminably slow in coming
into harbour. Nella walked on the Digue for a few
minutes to watch it the better. The town was
silent and almost deserted. It had a false and
sinister aspect. She remembered tales which she
had heard of this glittering resort, which in the
season holds more scoundrels than any place in
Europe, save only Monte Carlo. She remembered
that the gilded adventures of every nation under
the sun forgathered there either for business or
pleasure, and that some of the most wonderful
crimes of the latter half of the century had been
schemed and matured in that haunt of cosmopolitan
iniquity.

When the second steamer arrived Nella stood at
the end of the gangway, close to the
ticket-collector. The first person to step on
shore was - not the Baroness Zerlinski, but Miss
Spencer herself! Nella turned aside instantly,
hiding her face, and Miss Spencer, carrying a
small bag, hurried with assured footsteps to the
Custom House. It seemed as if she knew the port
of Ostend fairly well. The moon shone like day,
and Nella had full opportunity to observe her
quarry. She could see now quite plainly that the
Baroness Zerlinski had been only Miss Spencer in
disguise. There was the same gait, the same
movement of the head and of the hips; the white
hair was easily to be accounted for by a wig, and
the wrinkles by a paint brush and some grease
paints. Miss Spencer, whose hair was now its old
accustomed yellow, got through the Custom House
without difficulty, and Nella saw her call a
closed carriage and say something to the driver.
The vehicle drove off. Nella jumped into the next
carriage - an open one - that came up.

'Follow that carriage,' she said succinctly to
the driver in French.

'Bien, madame!' The driver whipped up his
horse, and the animal shot forward with a terrific
clatter over the cobbles. It appeared that this
driver was quite accustomed to following other
carriages.

'Now I am fairly in for it!' said Nella to
herself. She laughed unsteadily, but her heart
was beating with an extraordinary thump.

For some time the pursued vehicle kept well in
front. It crossed the town nearly from end to
end, and plunged into a maze of small streets far
on the south side of the Kursaal. Then gradually
Nella's equipage began to overtake it. The first
carriage stopped with a jerk before a tall dark
house, and Miss Spencer emerged. Nella called to
her driver to stop, but he, determined to be in at
the death, was engaged in whipping his horse, and
he completely ignored her commands. He drew up
triumphantly at the tall dark house just at the
moment when Miss Spencer disappeared into it. The
other carriage drove away. Nella, uncertain what
to do, stepped down from her carriage and gave the
driver some money. At the same moment a man
reopened the door of the house, which had closed
on Miss Spencer.

'I want to see Miss Spencer,' said Nella
impulsively. She couldn't think of anything else
to say.

'Miss Spencer?

'Yes; she's just arrived.'

'It's O.K., I suppose,' said the man.

'I guess so,' said Nella, and she walked past
him into the house. She was astonished at her own
audacity.

Miss Spencer was just going into a room off the
narrow hall. Nella followed her into the
apartment, which was shabbily furnished in the
Belgian lodging-house style.

'Well, Miss Spencer,' she greeted the former
Baroness Zerlinski, 'I guess you didn't expect to
see me. You left our hotel very suddenly this
afternoon, and you left it very suddenly a few
days ago; and so I've just called to make a few
inquiries.'

To do the lady justice, Miss Spencer bore the
surprising ordeal very well. She did not flinch;
she betrayed no emotion. The sole sign of
perturbation was in her hurried breathing.

'You have ceased to be the Baroness Zerlinski,'
Nella continued. 'May I sit down?'

'Certainly, sit down,' said Miss Spencer,
copying the girl's tone. 'You are a fairly smart
young woman, that I will say. What do you want?
Weren't my books all straight?'

'Your books were all straight. I haven't come
about your books. I have come about the murder of
Reginald Dimmock, the disappearance of his corpse,
and the disappearance of Prince Eugen of Posen. I
thought you might be able to help me in some
investigations which I am making.'

Miss Spencer's eyes gleamed, and she stood up
and moved swiftly to the mantelpiece.

'You may be a Yankee, but you're a fool,' she
said.

She took hold of the bell-rope.

'Don't ring that bell if you value your life,'
said Nella.

'If what?' Miss Spencer remarked.

'If you value your life,' said Nella calmly,
and with the words she pulled from her pocket a
very neat and dainty little revolver.

Chapter Nine

TWO WOMEN AND THE REVOLVER

'Am I?' Nella replied, as firmly as she could,
though her hand shook violently with excitement,
could Miss Spencer but have observed it. 'Am I?
You said just now that I might be a Yankee girl,
but I was a fool. Well, I am a Yankee girl, as
you call it; and in my country, if they don't
teach revolver-shooting in boarding-schools, there
are at least a lot of girls who can handle a
revolver. I happen to be one of them. I tell you
that if you ring that bell you will suffer.'

Most of this was simple bluff on Nella's part,
and she trembled lest Miss Spencer should perceive
that it was simple bluff. Happily for her, Miss
Spencer belonged to that order of women who have
every sort of courage except physical courage.
Miss Spencer could have withstood successfully any
moral trial, but persuade her that her skin was in
danger, and she would succumb. Nella at once
divined this useful fact, and proceeded
accordingly, hiding the strangeness of her own
sensations as well as she could.

'You had better sit down now,' said Nella, 'and
I will ask you a few questions.'

And Miss Spencer obediently sat down, rather
white, and trying to screw her lips into a formal
smile.

'Why did you leave the Grand Babylon that
night?' Nella began her examination, putting on a
stern, barrister-like expression.

'I had orders to, Miss Racksole.'

'Whose orders?'

'Well, I'm - I'm - the fact is, I'm a married
woman, and it was my husband's orders.'

'Who is your husband?

'Tom Jackson - Jules, you know, head waiter at
the Grand Babylon.'

'So Jules's real name is Tom Jackson? Why did
he want you to leave without giving notice?'

'I'm sure I don't know, Miss Racksole. I swear
I don't know. He's my husband, and, of course, I
do what he tells me, as you will some day do what
your husband tells you. Please heaven you'll get
a better husband than mine!'

Miss Spencer showed a sign of tears.

Nella fingered the revolver, and put it at full
cock. 'Well,' she repeated, 'why did he want you
to leave?' She was tremendously surprised at her
own coolness, and somewhat pleased with it, too.

'I can't tell you, I can't tell you.'

'You've just got to,' Nella said, in a
terrible, remorseless tone.

'He - he wished me to come over here to Ostend.
Something had gone wrong. Oh! he's a fearful
man, is Tom. If I told you, he'd - '

'Had something gone wrong in the hotel, or over
here?'

'Both.'

'Was it about Prince Eugen of Posen?'

'I don't know - that is, yes, I think so.'

'What has your husband to do with Prince
Eugen?'

'I believe he has some - some sort of business
with him, some money business.'

'And was Mr Dimmock in this business?

'I fancy so, Miss Racksole. I'm telling you
all I know, that I swear.'

'Did your husband and Mr Dimmock have a quarrel
that night in Room 111?'

'They had some difficulty.'

'And the result of that was that you came to
Ostend instantly?'

'Yes; I suppose so.'

'And what were you to do in Ostend? What were
your instructions from this husband of yours?'

Miss Spencer's head dropped on her arms on the
table which separated her from Nella, and she
appeared to sob violently.

'Have pity on me,' she murmured, 'I can't tell
you any more.'

'Why?'

'He'd kill me if he knew.'

'You're wandering from the subject,' observed
Nella coldly. 'This is the last time I shall warn
you. Let me tell you plainly I've got the best
reasons for being desperate, and if anything
happens to you I shall say I did it in
sell-defence. Now, what were you to do in
Ostend?'

'I shall die for this anyhow,' whined Miss
Spencer, and then, with a sort of fierce despair,
'I had to keep watch on Prince Eugen.'

'Where? In this house?'

Miss Spencer nodded, and, looking up, Nella
could see the traces of tears in her face.

'Then Prince Eugen was a prisoner? Some one
had captured him at the instigation of Jules?'

'Yes, if you must have it.'

'Why was it necessary for you specially to come
to Ostend?'

'Oh! Tom trusts me. You see, I know Ostend.
Before I took that place at the Grand Babylon I
had travelled over Europe, and Tom knew that I
knew a thing or two.'

'Why did you take the place at the Grand
Babylon?'

'Because Tom told me to. He said I should be
useful to him there.'

'Is your husband an Anarchist, or something of
that kind, Miss Spencer?'

'I don't know. I'd tell you in a minute if I
knew. But he's one of those that keep themselves
to themselves.'

'Do you know if he has ever committed a murder?

'Never!' said Miss Spencer, with righteous
repudiation of the mere idea.

'But Mr Dimmock was murdered. He was poisoned.
If he had not been poisoned why was his body
stolen? It must have been stolen to prevent
inquiry, to hide traces. Tell me about that.'

'I take my dying oath,' said Miss Spencer,
standing up a little way from the table, 'I take
my dying oath I didn't know Mr Dimmock was dead
till I saw it in the newspaper.'

'You swear you had no suspicion of it?'

'I swear I hadn't.'

Nella was inclined to believe the statement.
The woman and the girl looked at each other in the
tawdry, frowsy, lamp-lit room. Miss Spencer
nervously patted her yellow hair into shape, as if
gradually recovering her composure and equanimity.
The whole affair seemed like a dream to Nella, a
disturbing, sinister nightmare. She was a little
uncertain what to say. She felt that she had not
yet got hold of any very definite information.
'Where is Prince Eugen now?' she asked at length.

'I don't know, miss.'

'He isn't in this house?'

'No, miss.'

'Ah! We will see presently.'

'They took him away, Miss Racksole.'

'Who took him away? Some of your husband's
friends?'

'Some of his - acquaintances.'

'Then there is a gang of you?'

'A gang of us - a gang! I don't know what you
mean,' Miss Spencer quavered.

'Oh, but you must know,' smiled Nella calmly.
'You can't possibly be so innocent as all that,
Mrs Tom Jackson. You can't play games with me.
You've just got to remember that I'm what you call
a Yankee girl. There's one thing that I mean to
find out, within the next five minutes, and that
is - how your charming husband kidnapped Prince
Eugen, and why he kidnapped him. Let us begin
with the second question. You have evaded it
once.'

Miss Spencer looked into Nella's face, and then
her eyes dropped, and her fingers worked nervously
with the tablecloth.

'How can I tell you,' she said, 'when I don't
know? You've got the whip-hand of me, and you're
tormenting me for your own pleasure.' She wore an
expression of persecuted innocence.

'Did Mr Tom Jackson want to get some money out
of Prince Eugen?'

'Money! Not he! Tom's never short of money.'

'But I mean a lot of money - tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands?'

'Tom never wanted money from anyone,' said Miss
Spencer doggedly.

'Then had he some reason for wishing to prevent
Prince Eugen from coming to London?'

'Perhaps he had. I don't know. If you kill
me, I don't know.' Nella stopped to reflect. Then
she raised the revolver. It was a mechanical,
unintentional sort of action, and certainly she
had no intention of using the weapon, but, strange
to say, Miss Spencer again cowered before it.
Even at that moment Nella wondered that a woman
like Miss Spencer could be so simple as to think
the revolver would actually be used. Having
absolutely no physical cowardice herself, Nella
had the greatest difficulty in imagining that
other people could be at the mercy of a bodily
fear. Still, she saw her advantage, and used it
relentlessly, and with as much theatrical gesture
as she could command. She raised the revolver
till it was level with Miss Spencer's face, and
suddenly a new, queer feeling took hold of her.
She knew that she would indeed use that revolver
now, if the miserable woman before her drove her
too far. She felt afraid - afraid of herself; she
was in the grasp of a savage, primeval instinct.
In a flash she saw Miss Spencer dead at her feet -
the police - a court of justice - the scaffold.
It was horrible.

'Speak,' she said hoarsely, and Miss Spencer's
face went whiter.

'Tom did say,' the woman whispered rapidly,
awesomely, 'that if Prince Eugen got to London it
would upset his scheme.'

'What scheme? What scheme? Answer me.'

'Heaven help me, I don't know.' Miss Spencer
sank into a chair. 'He said Mr Dimmock had turned
tail, and he should have to settle him and then
Rocco - '

'Rocco! What about Rocco?' Nella could
scarcely hear herself. Her grip of the revolver
tightened.

Miss Spencer's eyes opened wider; she gazed at
Nella with a glassy stare.

'Don't ask me. It's death!' Her eyes were
fixed as if in horror.

'It is,' said Nella, and the sound of her voice
seemed to her to issue from the lips of some third
person.

'It's death,' repeated Miss Spencer, and
gradually her head and shoulders sank back, and
hung loosely over the chair. Nella was conscious
of a sudden revulsion. The woman had surely
fainted. Dropping the revolver she ran round the
table. She was herself again - feminine,
sympathetic, the old Nella. She felt immensely
relieved that this had happened. But at the same
instant Miss Spencer sprang up from the chair like
a cat, seized the revolver, and with a wild
movement of the arm flung it against the window.
It crashed through the glass, exploding as it
went, and there was a tense silence.

'I told you that you were a fool,' remarked
Miss Spencer slowly, 'coming here like a sort of
female Jack Sheppard, and trying to get the best
of me. We are on equal terms now. You frightened
me, but I knew I was a cleverer woman than you,
and that in the end, if I kept on long enough, I
should win. Now it will be my turn.'

Dumbfounded, and overcome with a miserable
sense of the truth of Miss Spencer's words, Nella
stood still. The idea of her colossal foolishness
swept through her like a flood. She felt almost
ashamed. But even at this juncture she had no
fear. She faced the woman bravely, her mind
leaping about in search of some plan. She could
think of nothing but a bribe - an enormous bribe.

Miss Spencer folded her arms, and glanced at
the door, smiling bitterly.

'You know my father is a millionaire; perhaps
you know that he is one of the richest men in the
world. If I give you my word of honour not to
reveal anything that you've told me, what will you
take to let me go free?'

'What sum do you suggest?' asked Miss Spencer
carelessly.

'Twenty thousand pounds,' said Nella promptly.
She had begun to regard the affair as a business
operation.

Miss Spencer's lip curled.

'A hundred thousand.'

Again Miss Spencer's lip curled.

'Well, say a million. I can rely on my father,
and so may you.'

'You think you are worth a million to him?'

'I do,' said Nella.

'And you think we could trust you to see that
it was paid?'

'Of course you could.'

'And we should not suffer afterwards in any
way?'

'I would give you my word, and my father's
word.'

'Bah!' exclaimed Miss Spencer: 'how do you know
I wouldn't let you go free for nothing? You are
only a rash, silly girl.'

'I know you wouldn't. I can read your face too
well.'

'You are right,' Miss Spencer replied slowly.
'I wouldn't. I wouldn't let you go for all the
dollars in America.'

Nella felt cold down the spine, and sat down
again in her chair. A draught of air from the
broken window blew on her cheek. Steps sounded in
the passage; the door opened, but Nella did not
turn round. She could not move her eyes from Miss
Spencer's. There was a noise of rushing water in
her ears. She lost consciousness, and slipped
limply to the ground.

Chapter Ten

AT SEA

IT seemed to Nella that she was being
rocked gently in a vast cradle, which swayed to
and fro with a motion at once slow and incredibly
gentle. This sensation continued for some time,
and there was added to it the sound of a quick,
quiet, muffled beat. Soft, exhilarating breezes
wafted her forward in spite of herself, and yet
she remained in a delicious calm. She wondered if
her mother was kneeling by her side, whispering
some lullaby in her childish ears. Then strange
colours swam before her eyes, her eyelids wavered,
and at last she awoke. For a few moments her gaze
travelled to and fro in a vain search for some
clue to her surroundings. was aware of nothing
except sense of repose and a feeling of relief
that some mighty and fatal struggle was over; she
cared not whether she had conquered or suffered
defeat in the struggle of her soul with some other
soul; it was finished, done with, and the
consciousness of its conclusion satisfied and
contented her. Gradually her brain, recovering
from its obsession, began to grasp the phenomena
of her surroundings, and she saw that she was on a
yacht, and that the yacht was moving. The motion
of the cradle was the smooth rolling of the
vessel; the beat was the beat of its screw; the
strange colours were the cloud tints thrown by the
sun as it rose over a distant and receding shore
in the wake of the yacht; her mother's lullaby was
the crooned song of the man at the wheel. Nella
all through her life had had many experiences of
yachting. From the waters of the River Hudson to
those bluer tides of the Mediterranean Sea, she
had yachted in all seasons and all weathers. She
loved the water, and now it seemed deliciously
right and proper that she should be on the water
again. She raised her head to look round, and
then let it sink back: she was fatigued,
enervated; she
desired only solitude and calm; she had no care,
no anxiety, no responsibility: a hundred years
might have passed since her meeting with Miss
Spencer, and the memory of that meeting appeared
to have faded into the remotest background of her
mind.

It was a small yacht, and her practised eye at
once told that it belonged to the highest
aristocracy of pleasure craft. As she reclined in
the deck-chair (it did not occur to her at that
moment to speculate as to the identity of the
person who had led her therein) she examined all
visible details of the vessel. The deck was as
white and smooth as her own hand, and the seams
ran along its length like blue veins. All the
brass-work, from the band round the slender funnel
to the concave surface of the binnacle, shone like
gold. The tapered masts stretched upwards at a
rakish angle, and the rigging seemed like spun
silk. No sails were set; the yacht was under
steam, and doing about seven or eight knots. She
judged that it was a boat of a hundred tons or so,
probably Clyde-built, and not more than two or
three years old. No one was to be seen on deck
except the man at the wheel: this man wore a blue
jersey; but there was neither name nor initial on
the jersey, nor was there a name on the white
life-buoys lashed to the main rigging, nor on the
polished dinghy which hung on the starboard
davits. She called to the man, and called again,
in a feeble voice, but the steerer took no notice
of her, and continued his quiet song as though
nothing else existed in the universe save the
yacht, the sea, the sun, and himself.

Then her eyes swept the outline of the land
from which they were hastening, and she could just
distinguish a lighthouse and a great white
irregular dome, which she recognized as the
Kursaal at Ostend, that gorgeous rival of the
gaming palace at Monte Carlo. So she was leaving
Ostend. The rays of the sun fell on her
caressingly, like a restorative. All around the
water was changing from wonderful greys and dark
blues to still more wonderful pinks and
translucent unearthly greens; the magic
kaleidoscope of dawn was going forward in its
accustomed way, regardless of the vicissitudes of
mortals. Here and there in the distance she
descried a sail - the brown sail of some Ostend
fishing-boat returning home after a night's
trawling. Then the beat of paddles caught her
ear, and a steamer blundered past, wallowing
clumsily among the waves like a tortoise. It was
the Swallow from London. She could
see some of its passengers leaning curiously over
the aft-rail. A girl in a mackintosh signalled to
her, and mechanically she answered the salute with
her arm. The officer of the bridge of the
Swallow hailed the yacht, but the man
at the wheel offered no reply. In another minute
the Swallow was nothing but a blot in
the distance.

Nella tried to sit straight in the deck-chair,
but she found herself unable to do so. Throwing
off the rug which covered her, she discovered that
she had been tied to the chair by means of a piece
of broad webbing. Instantly she was alert, awake,
angry; she knew that her perils were not over; she
felt that possibly they had scarcely yet begun.
Her lazy contentment, her dreamy sense of peace
and repose, vanished utterly, and she steeled
herself to meet the dangers of a grave and
difficult situation.

Just at that moment a man came up from below.
He was a man of forty or so, clad in
irreproachable blue, with a peaked yachting cap.
He raised the cap politely.

'Good morning,' he said. 'Beautiful sunrise,
isn't it?' The clever and calculated insolence of
his tone cut her like a lash as she lay bound in
the chair. Like all people who have lived easy
and joyous lives in those fair regions where gold
smoothes every crease and law keeps a tight hand
on disorder, she found it hard to realize that
there were other regions where gold was useless
and law without power. Twenty-four hours ago she
would have declared it impossible that such an
experience as she had suffered could happen to
anyone; she would have talked airily about
civilization and the nineteenth century, and
progress and the police. But her experience was
teaching her that human nature remains always the
same, and that beneath the thin crust of security
on which we good citizens exist the dark and
secret forces of crime continue to move, just as
they did in the days when you couldn't go from
Cheapside to Chelsea without being set upon by
thieves. Her experience was in a fair way to
teach her this lesson better than she could have
learnt it even in the bureaux of the detective
police of Paris, London, and St Petersburg.

'Good morning,' the man repeated, and she
glanced at him with a sullen, angry gaze.

'You!' she exclaimed, 'You, Mr Thomas Jackson,
if that is your name! Loose me from this chair,
and I will talk to you.' Her eyes flashed as she
spoke, and the contempt in them added mightily to
her beauty. Mr Thomas Jackson, otherwise Jules,
erstwhile head waiter at the Grand Babylon,
considered himself a connoisseur in feminine
loveliness, and the vision of Nella Racksole smote
him like an exquisite blow.

'With pleasure,' he replied. 'I had forgotten
that to prevent you from falling I had secured you
to the chair'; and with a quick movement he
unfastened the band. Nella stood up, quivering
with fiery annoyance and scorn.

The man offered her a deck-chair with a
characteristic gesture. Nella was obliged to
acknowledge, in spite of herself, that the fellow
had distinction, an air of breeding. No one would
have guessed that for twenty years he had been an
hotel waiter. His long, lithe figure, and easy,
careless carriage seemed to be the figure and
carriage of an aristocrat, and his voice was
quiet, restrained, and authoritative.

'That has nothing to do with my being carried
off in this yacht of yours.'

'It is not my yacht,' he said, 'but that is a
minor detail. As to the more important matter,
forgive me that I remind you that only a few hours
ago you were threatening a lady in my house with a
revolver.'

'Then it was your house?'

'Why not? May I not possess a house?' He
smiled.

'I must request you to put the yacht about at
once, instantly, and take me back.' She tried to
speak firmly.

'Ah!' he said, 'I am afraid that's impossible.
I didn't put out to sea with the intention of
returning at once, instantly.' In the last words
he gave a faint imitation of her tone.

'When I do get back,' she said, 'when my father
gets to know of this affair, it will be an
exceedingly bad day for you, Mr Jackson.'

'But supposing your father doesn't hear of it -
'

'What?'

'Supposing you never get back?'

'Do you mean, then, to have my murder on your
conscience?'

'Talking of murder,' he said, 'you came very
near to murdering my friend, Miss Spencer. At
least, so she tells me.'

'Is Miss Spencer on board?' Nella asked, seeing
perhaps a faint ray of hope in the possible
presence of a woman.

'Miss Spencer is not on board. There is no one
on board except you and myself and a small crew -
a very discreet crew, I may add.'

'I will have nothing more to say to you. You
must take your own course.'

Thanks for the permission,' he said. 'I will
send you up some breakfast.'

He went to the saloon stairs and whistled, and
a Negro boy appeared with a tray of chocolate.
Nella took it, and, without the slightest
hesitation, threw it overboard. Mr Jackson walked
away a few steps and then returned.

'You have spirit,' he said, 'and I admire
spirit. It is a rare quality.'

She made no reply. 'Why did you mix yourself
up in my affairs at all?' he went on. Again she
made no reply, but the question set her thinking:
why had she mixed herself up in this mysterious
business? It was quite at variance with the usual
methods of her gay and butterfly existence to
meddle at all with serious things. Had she acted
merely from a desire to see justice done and
wickedness punished? Or was it the desire of
adventure? Or was it, perhaps, the desire to be
of service to His Serene Highness Prince Aribert?

'It is no fault of mine that you are in this
fix,' Jules continued. 'I didn't bring you into
it. You brought yourself into it. You and your
father - you have been moving along at a pace
which is rather too rapid.'

'That remains to be seen,' she put in coldly.

'It does,' he admitted. 'And I repeat that I
can't help admiring you - that is, when you aren't
interfering with my private affairs. That is a
proceeding which I have never tolerated from
anyone - not even from a millionaire, nor even
from a beautiful woman.' He bowed. 'I will tell
you what I propose to do. I propose to escort you
to a place of safety, and to keep you there till
my operations are concluded, and the possibility
of interference entirely removed. You spoke just
now of murder. What a crude notion that was of
yours! It is only the amateur who practises
murder - '

'What about Reginald Dimmock?' she interjected
quickly.

He paused gravely.

'Reginald Dimmock,' he repeated. 'I had
imagined his was a case of heart disease. Let me
send you up some more chocolate. I'm sure you're
hungry.'

'I will starve before I touch your food,' she
said.

'Gallant creature!' he murmured, and his eyes
roved over her face. Her superb, supercilious
beauty overcame him. 'Ah!' he said, 'what a wife
you would make!' He approached nearer to her.
'You and I, Miss Racksole, your beauty and wealth
and my brains - we could conquer the world. Few
men are worthy of you, but I am one of the few.
Listen! You might do worse. Marry me. I am a
great man; I shall be greater. I adore you.
Marry me, and I will save your life. All shall be
well. I will begin again. The past shall be as
though there had been no past.'

'This is somewhat sudden - Jules,' she said
with biting contempt.

'Did you expect me to be conventional?' he
retorted. 'I love you.'

'Granted,' she said, for the sake of the
argument. 'Then what will occur to your present
wife?'

'My present wife?'

'Yes, Miss Spencer, as she is called.'

'She told you I was her husband?'

'Incidentally she did.'

'She isn't.'

'Perhaps she isn't. But, nevertheless, I think
I won't marry you.' Nella stood like a statue of
scorn before him.

He went still nearer to her. 'Give me a kiss,
then; one kiss - I won't ask for more; one kiss
from those lips, and you shall go free. Men have
ruined themselves for a kiss. I will.'

'Coward!' she ejaculated.

'Coward!' he repeated. 'Coward, am I? Then
I'll be a coward, and you shall kiss me whether
you will or not.'

He put a hand on her shoulder. As she shrank
back from his lustrous eyes, with an involuntary
scream, a figure sprang out of the dinghy a few
feet away. With a single blow, neatly directed to
Mr Jackson's ear, Mr Jackson was stretched
senseless on the deck. Prince Aribert of Posen
stood over him with a revolver. It was probably
the greatest surprise of Mr Jackson's whole life.

'Don't be alarmed,' said the Prince to Nella,
'my being here is the simplest thing in the world,
and I will explain it as soon as I have finished
with this fellow.'

Nella could think of nothing to say, but she
noticed the revolver in the Prince's hand.

'Why,' she remarked, 'that's my revolver.'

'It is,' he said, 'and I will explain that,
too.'

The man at the wheel gave no heed whatever to
the scene.

Chapter Eleven

THE COURT PAWNBROKER

'MR SAMPSON LEVI wishes to see you,
sir.'

These words, spoken by a servant to Theodore
Racksole, aroused the millionaire from a reverie
which had been the reverse of pleasant. The fact
was, and it is necessary to insist on it, that Mr
Racksole, owner of the Grand Babylon Hotel, was by
no means in a state of self-satisfaction. A
mystery had attached itself to his hotel, and with
all his acumen and knowledge of things in general
he was unable to solve that mystery. He laughed
at the fruitless efforts of the police, but he
could not honestly say that his own efforts had
been less barren. The public was talking, for,
after all, the disappearance of poor Dimmock's
body had got noised abroad in an indirect sort of
way, and Theodore Racksole did not like the idea
of his impeccable hotel being the subject of
sinister rumours. He wondered, grimly, what the
public and the Sunday newspapers would say if they
were aware of all the other phenomena, not yet
common property: of Miss Spencer's disappearance,
of Jules' strange visits, and of the non-arrival
of Prince Eugen of Posen. Theodore Racksole had
worried his brain without result. He had
conducted an elaborate private investigation
without result, and he had spent a certain amount
of money without result. The police said that
they had a clue; but Racksole remarked that it was
always the business of the police to have a clue,
that they seldom had more than a clue, and that a
clue without some sequel to it was a pretty stupid
business. The only sure thing in the whole affair
was that a cloud rested over his hotel, his
beautiful new toy, the finest of its kind. The
cloud was not interfering with business, but,
nevertheless, it was a cloud, and he fiercely
resented its presence; perhaps it would be more
correct to say that he fiercely resented his
inability to dissipate it.

'Mr Sampson Levi wishes to see you, sir,' the
servant repeated, having received no sign that his
master had heard him.

'So I hear,' said Racksole. 'Does he want to
see me, personally?'

'He asked for you, sir.'

'Perhaps it is Rocco he wants to see, about a
menu or something of that kind?'

The great stockbroker of the 'Kaffir Circus'
entered with a simple unassuming air. He was a
rather short, florid man, dressed like a typical
Hebraic financier, with too much watch-chain and
too little waistcoat. In his fat hand he held a
gold-headed cane, and an absolutely new silk hat -
for it was Friday, and Mr Levi purchased a new hat
every Friday of his life, holiday times only
excepted. He breathed heavily and sniffed through
his nose a good deal, as though he had just
performed some Herculean physical labour. He
glanced at the American millionaire with an
expression in which a slight embarrassment might
have been detected, but at the same time his
round, red face disclosed a certain frank
admiration and good nature.

'Mr Racksole, I believe - Mr Theodore Racksole.
Proud to meet you, sir.' Such were the first words
of Mr Sampson Levi. In form they were the
greeting of a third-rate chimney-sweep, but,
strangely enough, Theodore Racksole liked their
tone. He said to himself that here, precisely
where no one would have expected to find one, was
an honest man.

'Good day,' said Racksole briefly. 'To what do
I owe the pleasure - '

'I expect your time is limited,' answered
Sampson Levi. 'Anyhow, mine is, and so I'll come
straight to the point, Mr Racksole. I'm a plain
man. I don't pretend to be a gentleman or any
nonsense of that kind. I'm a stockbroker, that's
what I am, and I don't care who knows it. The
other night I had a ball in this hotel. It cost
me a couple of thousand and odd pounds, and, by
the way, I wrote out a cheque for your bill this
morning. I don't like balls, but they're useful
to me, and my little wife likes 'em, and so we
give 'em. Now, I've nothing to say against the
hotel management as regards that ball: it was very
decently done, very decently, but what I want to
know is this - Why did you have a private
detective among my guests?'

'Yes,' Mr Sampson Levi said firmly, fanning
himself in his chair, and gazing at Theodore
Racksole with the direct earnest expression of a
man having a grievance. 'Yes; a private
detective. It's a small matter, I know, and I
dare say you think you've got a right, as
proprietor of the show, to do what you like in
that line; but I've just called to tell you that I
object. I've called as a matter of principle.
I'm not angry; it's the principle of the thing.'

'My dear Mr Levi,' said Racksole, 'I assure you
that, having let the Gold Room to a private
individual for a private entertainment, I should
never dream of doing what you suggest.'

'Straight?' asked Mr Sampson Levi, using his
own picturesque language.

'Straight,' said Racksole smiling.

'There was a gent present at my ball that I
didn't ask. I've got a wonderful memory for
faces, and I know. Several fellows asked me
afterwards what he was doing there. I was told by
someone that he was one of your waiters, but I
didn't believe that. I know nothing of the Grand
Babylon; it's not quite my style of tavern, but I
don't think you'd send one of your own waiters to
watch my guests - unless, of course, you sent him
as a waiter; and this chap didn't do any waiting,
though he did his share of drinking.'

'Perhaps I can throw some light on this
mystery,' said Racksole. 'I may tell you that I
was already aware that man had attended your ball
uninvited.'

'How did you get to know?'

'By pure chance, Mr Levi, and not by inquiry.
That man was a former waiter at this hotel - the
head waiter, in fact - Jules. No doubt you have
heard of him.'

'Not I,' said Mr Levi positively.

'Ah!' said Racksole, 'I was informed that
everyone knew Jules, but it appears not. Well, be
that as it may, previously to the night of your
ball, I had dismissed Jules. I had ordered him
never to enter the Babylon again. But on that
evening I encountered him here - not in the Gold
Room, but in the hotel itself. I asked him to
explain his presence, and he stated he was your
guest. That is all I know of the matter, Mr Levi,
and I am extremely sorry that you should have
thought me capable of the enormity of placing a
private detective among your guests.'

'This is perfectly satisfactory to me,' Mr
Sampson Levi said, after a pause. 'I only wanted
an explanation, and I've got it. I was told by
some pals of mine in the City I might rely on Mr
Theodore Racksole going straight to the point, and
I'm glad they were right. Now as to that feller
Jules, I shall make my own inquiries as to him.
Might I ask you why you dismissed him?'

'I don't know why I dismissed him.'

'You don't know? Oh! come now! I'm only
asking because I thought you might be able to give
me a hint why he turned up uninvited at my ball.
Sorry if I'm too inquisitive.'

'Not at all, Mr Levi; but I really don't know.
I only sort of felt that he was a suspicious
character. I dismissed him on instinct, as it
were. See?'

Without answering this question Mr Levi asked
another. 'If this Jules is such a well-known
person,' he said, 'how could the feller hope to
come to my ball without being recognized?'

'I thought not,' said Levi. Well, I never
touch American rails myself, and so I reckon we
sha'n't come across each other. Good day.'

'Good day,' said Racksole politely, following
Mr Sampson Levi to the door. With his hand on the
handle of the door, Mr Levi stopped, and, gazing
at Theodore Racksole with a shrewd, quizzical
expression, remarked:

'Strange things been going on here lately, eh?'

The two men looked very hard at each other for
several seconds.

'Yes,' Racksole assented. 'Know anything about
them?'

'Well - no, not exactly,' said Mr Levi. 'But I
had a fancy you and I might be useful to each
other; I had a kind of fancy to that effect.'

'Come back and sit down again, Mr Levi,'
Racksole said, attracted by the evident
straightforwardness of the man's tone. 'Now, how
can we be of service to each other? I flatter
myself I'm something of a judge of character,
especially financial character, and I tell you -
if you'll put your cards on the table, I'll do
ditto with mine.'

'Agreed,' said Mr Sampson Levi. 'I'll begin by
explaining my interest in your hotel. I have been
expecting to receive a summons from a certain
Prince Eugen of Posen to attend him here, and that
summons hasn't arrived. It appears that Prince
Eugen hasn't come to London at all. Now, I could
have taken my dying davy that he would have been
here yesterday at the latest.'

'Why were you so sure?'

'Question for question,' said Levi. 'Let's
clear the ground first, Mr Racksole. Why did you
buy this hotel? That's a conundrum that's been
puzzling a lot of our fellows in the City for some
days past. Why did you buy the Grand Babylon?
And what is the next move to be?'

'There is no next move,' answered Racksole
candidly, 'and I will tell you why I bought the
hotel; there need be no secret about it. I bought
it because of a whim.' And then Theodore Racksole
gave this little Jew, whom he had begun to
respect, a faithful account of the transaction
with Mr Félix Babylon. 'I suppose,' he
added, 'you find a difficulty in appreciating my
state of mind when I did the deal.'

'Not a bit,' said Mr Levi. 'I once bought an
electric launch on the Thames in a very similar
way, and it turned out to be one of the most
satisfactory purchases I ever made. Then it's a
simple accident that you own this hotel at the
present moment?'

'A simple accident - all because of a beefsteak
and a bottle of Bass.'

'Um!' grunted Mr Sampson Levi, stroking his
triple chin.

'To return to Prince Eugen,' Racksole resumed.
'I was expecting His Highness here. The State
apartments had been prepared for him. He was due
on the very afternoon that young Dimmock died.
But he never came, and I have not heard why he has
failed to arrive; nor have I seen his name in the
papers. What his business was in London, I don't
know.'

'I will tell you,' said Mr Sampson Levi, 'he
was coming to arrange a loan.'

'A State loan?'

'No - a private loan.'

'Whom from?'

'From me, Sampson Levi. You look surprised.
If you'd lived in London a little longer, you'd
know that I was just the person the Prince would
come to. Perhaps you aren't aware that down
Throgmorton Street way I'm called "The Court
Pawnbroker", because I arrange loans for the
minor, second-class Princes of Europe. I'm a
stockbroker, but my real business is financing
some of the little Courts of Europe. Now, I may
tell you that the Hereditary Prince of Posen
particularly wanted a million, and he wanted it by
a certain date, and he knew that if the affair
wasn't fixed up by a certain time here he wouldn't
be able to get it by that certain date. That's
why I'm surprised he isn't in London.'

'What did he need a million for?'

'Debts,' answered Sampson Levi laconically.

'His own?'

'Certainly.'

'But he isn't thirty years of age?'

'What of that? He isn't the only European
Prince who has run up a million of debts in a
dozen years. To a Prince the thing is as easy as
eating a sandwich.'

'And why has he taken this sudden resolution to
liquidate them?'

'Because the Emperor and the lady's parents
won't let him marry till he has done so! And
quite right, too! He's got to show a clean sheet,
or the Princess Anna of Eckstein-Schwartzburg will
never be Princess of Posen. Even now the Emperor
has no idea how much Prince Eugen's debts amount
to. If he had - !'

'But would not the Emperor know of this
proposed loan?'

'Not necessarily at once. It could be so
managed. Twig?' Mr Sampson Levi laughed. 'I've
carried these little affairs through before.
After marriage it might be allowed to leak out.
And you know the Princess Anna's fortune is pretty
big! Now, Mr Racksole,' he added, abruptly
changing his tone, 'where do you suppose Prince
Eugen has disappeared to? Because if he doesn't
turn up to-day he can't have that million. To-day
is the last day. To-morrow the money will be
appropriated, elsewhere. Of course, I'm not alone
in this business, and my friends have something to
say.'

'You ask me where I think Prince Eugen has
disappeared to?'

'I do.'

'Then you think it's a disappearance?'

Sampson Levi nodded. 'Putting two and two
together,' he said, 'I do. The Dimmock business
is very peculiar - very peculiar, indeed. Dimmock
was a left-handed relation of the Posen family.
Twig? Scarcely anyone knows that. He was made
secretary and companion to Prince Aribert, just to
keep him in the domestic circle. His mother was
an Irishwoman, whose misfortune was that she was
too beautiful. Twig?' (Mr Sampson Levi always
used this extraordinary word when he was in a
communicative mood.) 'My belief is that Dimmock's
death has something to do with the disappearance
of Prince Eugen. The only thing that passes me is
this: Why should anyone want to make Prince Eugen
disappear? The poor little Prince hasn't an enemy
in the world. If he's been "copped", as they say,
why has he been "copped"? It won't do anyone any
good.'

'Won't it?' repeated Racksole, with a sudden
flash.

'What do you mean?' asked Mr Levi.

'I mean this: Suppose some other European
pauper Prince was anxious to marry Princess Anna
and her fortune, wouldn't that Prince have an
interest in stopping this loan of yours to Prince
Eugen? Wouldn't he have an interest in causing
Prince Eugen to disappear - at any rate, for a
time?'

Sampson Levi thought hard for a few moments.

'Mr Theodore Racksole,' he said at length, 'I
do believe you have hit on something.'

Chapter Twelve

ROCCO AND ROOM NO. 111

ON the afternoon of the same day -
the interview just described had occurred in the
morning - Racksole was visited by another idea,
and he said to himself that he ought to have
thought of it before. The conversation with Mr
Sampson Levi had continued for a considerable
time, and the two men had exchanged various
notions, and agreed to meet again, but the theory
that Reginald Dimmock had probably been a traitor
to his family - a traitor whose repentance had
caused his death - had not been thoroughly
discussed; the talk had tended rather to
Continental politics, with a view to discovering
what princely family might have an interest in the
temporary disappearance of Prince Eugen. Now, as
Racksole considered in detail the particular
affair of Reginald Dimmock, deceased, he was
struck by one point especially, to wit: Why had
Dimmock and Jules manoeuvred to turn Nella
Racksole out of Room No. 111 on that first night?
That they had so manoeuvred, that the broken
window-pane was not a mere accident, Racksole felt
perfectly sure. He had felt perfectly sure all
along; but the significance of the facts had not
struck him. It was plain to him now that there
must be something of extraordinary and peculiar
importance about Room No. 111. After lunch he
wandered quietly upstairs and looked at Room No.
111; that is to say, he looked at the outside of
it; it happened to be occupied, but the guest was
leaving that evening. The thought crossed his
mind that there could be no object in gazing
blankly at the outside of a room; yet he gazed;
then he wandered quickly down again to the next
floor, and in passing along the corridor of that
floor he stopped, and with an involuntary gesture
stamped his foot.

'Great Scott!' he said, 'I've got hold of
something - No. 111 is exactly over the State
apartments.'

He went to the bureau, and issued instructions
that No. 111 was not to be re-let to anyone until
further orders. At the bureau they gave him
Nella's note, which ran thus:

Dearest Papa, - I am
going away for a day or two on the trail of a due.
If I'm not back in three days, begin to inquire
for me at Ostend. Till then leave me alone. -
Your sagacious daughter,

NELL.

These few words, in Nella's large scrawling
hand, filled one side of the paper. At the bottom
was a P.T.O. He turned over, and read the
sentence, underlined, 'P.S. - Keep an eye on
Rocco.'

'I wonder what the little creature is up to?'
he murmured, as he tore the letter into small
fragments, and threw them into the waste-paper
basket. Then, without any delay, he took the lift
down to the basement, with the object of making a
preliminary inspection of Rocco in his lair. He
could scarcely bring himself to believe that this
suave and stately gentleman, this enthusiast of
gastronomy, was concerned in the machinations of
Jules and other rascals unknown. Nevertheless,
from habit, he obeyed his daughter, giving her
credit for a certain amount of perspicuity and
cleverness.

The kitchens of the Grand Babylon Hotel are one
of the wonders of Europe. Only three years before
the events now under narration Félix
Babylon had had them newly installed with every
device and patent that the ingenuity of two
continents could supply. They covered nearly an
acre of superficial space. They were walled and
floored from end to end with tiles and marble,
which enabled them to be washed down every morning
like the deck of a man-of-war. Visitors were
sometimes taken to see the potato-paring machine,
the patent plate-dryer, the Babylon-spit (a
contrivance of Félix Babylon's own), the
silver-grill, the system of connected stock-pots,
and other amazing phenomena of the department.
Sometimes, if they were fortunate, they might also
see the artist who sculptured ice into forms of
men and beasts for table ornaments, or the first
napkin-folder in London, or the man who daily
invented fresh designs for pastry and blancmanges.
Twelve chefs pursued their labours in those
kitchens, helped by ninety assistant chefs, and a
further army of unconsidered menials. Over all
these was Rocco, supreme and unapproachable.
Half-way along the suite of kitchens, Rocco had an
apartment of his own, wherein he thought out those
magnificent combinations, those marvellous feats
of succulence and originality, which had given him
his fame. Vistors never caught a glimpse of Rocco
in the kitchens, though sometimes, on a special
night, he would stroll nonchalantly through the
dining-room, like the great man he was, to receive
the compliments of the hotel habitués -
people of insight who recognized his uniqueness.

Theodore Racksole's sudden and unusual
appearance in the kitchen caused a little stir.
He nodded to some of the chefs, but said nothing
to anyone, merely wandering about amid the maze of
copper utensils, and white-capped workers. At
length he saw Rocco, surrounded by several
admiring chefs. Rocco was bending over a
freshly-roasted partridge which lay on a blue
dish. He plunged a long fork into the back of the
bird, and raised it in the air with his left hand.
In his right he held a long glittering
carving-knife. He was giving one of his
world-famous exhibitions of carving. In four
swift, unerring, delicate, perfect strokes he
cleanly severed the limbs of the partridge. It
was a wonderful achievement - how wondrous none
but the really skilful carver can properly
appreciate. The chefs emitted a hum of applause,
and Rocco, long, lean, and graceful, retired to
his own apartment. Racksole followed him. Rocco
sat in a chair, one hand over his eyes; he had not
noticed Theodore Racksole.

'What are you doing, M. Rocco?' the millionaire
asked smiling. 'Ah!' exclaimed Rocco, starting up
with an apology. 'Pardon! I was inventing a new
mayonnaise, which I shall need for a certain menu
next week.'

'Do you invent these things without materials,
then?' questioned Racksole.

'Certainly. I do dem in my mind. I tink dem.
Why should I want materials? I know all flavours.
I tink, and tink, and tink, and it is done. I
write down. I give the recipe to my best chef -
dere you are. I need not even taste, I know how
it will taste. It is like composing music. De
great composers do not compose at de piano.'

'I see,' said Racksole.

'It is because I work like dat dat you pay me
three thousand a year,' Rocco added gravely.

'Heard about Jules?' said Racksole abruptly.

'Jules?'

'Yes. He's been arrested in Ostend,' the
millionaire continued, lying cleverly at a
venture. 'They say that he and several others are
implicated in a murder case - the murder of
Reginald Dimmock.'

'Truly?' drawled Rocco, scarcely hiding a yawn.
His indifference was so superb, so gorgeous, that
Racksole instantly divined that it was assumed for
the occasion.

'It seems that, after all, the police are good
for something. But this is the first time I ever
knew them to be worth their salt. There is to be
a thorough and systematic search of the hotel
to-morrow,' Racksole went on. 'I have mentioned
it to you to warn you that so far as you are
concerned the search is of course merely a matter
of form. You will not object to the detectives
looking through your rooms?'

'Certainly not,' and Rocco shrugged his
shoulders.

'I shall ask you to say nothing about this to
anyone,' said Racksole. 'The news of Jules'
arrest is quite private to myself. The papers
know nothing of it. You comprehend?'

Rocco smiled in his grand manner, and Rocco's
master thereupon went away. Racksole was very
well satisfied with the little conversation. It
was perhaps dangerous to tell a series of mere
lies to a clever fellow like Rocco, and Racksole
wondered how he should ultimately explain them to
this great master-chef if his and Nella's
suspicions should be unfounded, and nothing came
of them. Nevertheless, Rocco's manner, a strange
elusive something in the man's eyes, had nearly
convinced Racksole that he was somehow implicated
in Jules' schemes - and probably in the death of
Reginald Dimmock and the disappearance of Prince
Eugen of Posen.

That night, or rather about half-past one the
next morning, when the last noises of the hotel's
life had died down, Racksole made his way to Room
111 on the second floor. He locked the door on
the inside, and proceeded to examine the place,
square foot by square foot. Every now and then
some creak or other sound startled him, and he
listened intently for a few seconds. The bedroom
was furnished in the ordinary splendid style of
bedrooms at the Grand Babylon Hotel, and in that
respect called for no remark. What most
interested Racksole was the flooring. He pulled
up the thick Oriental carpet, and peered along
every plank, but could discover nothing unusual.
Then he went to the dressing-room, and finally to
the bathroom, both of which opened out of the main
room. But in neither of these smaller chambers
was he any more successful than in the bedroom
itself. Finally he came to the bath, which was
enclosed in a panelled casing of polished wood,
after the manner of baths. Some baths have a
cupboard beneath the taps, with a door at the
side, but this one appeared to have none. He
tapped the panels, but not a single one of them
gave forth that 'curious hollow sound' which
usually betokens a secret place. Idly he turned
the cold-tap of the bath, and the water began to
rush in. He turned off the cold-tap and turned on
the waste-tap, and as he did so his knee, which
was pressing against the panelling, slipped
forward. The panelling had given way, and he saw
that one large panel was hinged from the inside,
and caught with a hasp, also on the inside. A
large space within the casing of the end of the
bath was thus revealed. Before doing anything
else, Racksole tried to repeat the trick with the
waste-tap, but he failed; it would not work again,
nor could he in any way perceive that there was
any connection between the rod of the waste-tap
and the hasp of the panel. Racksole could not see
into the cavity within the casing, and the
electric light was fixed, and could not be moved
about like a candle. He felt in his pockets, and
fortunately discovered a box of matches. Aided by
these, he looked into the cavity, and saw nothing;
nothing except a rather large hole at the far end
- some three feet from the casing. With some
difficulty he squeezed himself through the open
panel, and took a half-kneeling, half-sitting
posture within. There he struck a match, and it
was a most unfortunate thing that in striking, the
box being half open, he set fire to all the
matches, and was half smothered in the atrocious
stink of phosphorus which resulted. One match
burned clear on the floor of the cavity, and,
rubbing his eyes, Racksole picked it up, and
looked down the hole which he had previously
descried. It was a hole apparently bottomless,
and about eighteen inches square. The curious
part about the hole was that a rope-ladder hung
down it. When he saw that rope-ladder Racksole
smiled the smile of a happy man.

The match went out.

Should he make a long journey, perhaps to some
distant corner of the hotel, for a fresh box of
matches, or should he attempt to descend that
rope-ladder in the dark? He decided on the latter
course, and he was the more strongly moved thereto
as he could now distinguish a faint, a very faint
tinge of light at the bottom of the hole.

With infinite care he compressed himself into
the well-like hole, and descended the latter. At
length he arrived on firm ground, perspiring, but
quite safe and quite excited. He saw now that the
tinge of light came through a small hole in the
wood. He put his eye to the wood, and found that
he had a fine view of the State bathroom, and
through the door of the State bathroom into the
State bedroom. At the massive marble-topped
washstand in the State bedroom a man was visible,
bending over some object which lay thereon.

The man was Rocco!

Chapter Thirteen

IN THE STATE BEDROOM

IT was of course plain to Racksole
that the peculiar passageway which he had, at
great personal inconvenience, discovered between
the bathroom of No. 111 and the State bathroom on
the floor below must have been specially designed
by some person or persons for the purpose of
keeping a nefarious watch upon the occupants of
the State suite of apartments. It was a means of
communication at once simple and ingenious. At
that moment he could not be sure of the precise
method employed for it, but he surmised that the
casing of the waterpipes had been used as a
'well', while space for the pipes themselves had
been found in the thickness of the ample brick
walls of the Grand Babylon. The eye-hole, through
which he now had a view of the bedroom, was a very
minute one, and probably would scarcely be noticed
from the exterior. One thing he observed
concerning it, namely, that it had been made for a
man somewhat taller than himself; he was obliged
to stand on tiptoe in order to get his eye in the
correct position. He remembered that both Jules
and Rocco were distinctly above the average
height; also that they were both thin men, and
could have descended the well with comparative
ease. Theodore Racksole, though not stout, was a
well-set man with large bones.

These things flashed through his mind as he
gazed, spellbound, at the mysterious movements of
Rocco. The door between the bathroom and the
bedroom was wide open, and his own situation was
such that his view embraced a considerable portion
of the bedroom, including the whole of the immense
and gorgeously-upholstered bedstead, but not
including the whole of the marble washstand. He
could see only half of the washstand, and at
intervals Rocco passed out of sight as his lithe
hands moved over the object which lay on the
marble. At first Theodore Racksole could not
decide what this object was, but after a time, as
his eyes grew accustomed to the position and the
light, he made it out.

It was the body of a man. Or, rather, to be
more exact, Racksole could discern the legs of a
man on that half of the table which was visible to
him. Involuntarily he shuddered, as the
conviction forced itself upon him that Rocco had
some unconscious human being helpless on that cold
marble surface. The legs never moved. Therefore,
the hapless creature was either asleep or under
the influence of an anaesthetic - or (horrible
thought!) dead.

Racksole wanted to call out, to stop by some
means or other the dreadful midnight activity
which was proceeding before his astonished eyes;
but fortunately he restrained himself.

On the washstand he could see certain
strangely-shaped utensils and instruments which
Rocco used from time to time. The work seemed to
Racksole to continue for interminable hours, and
then at last Rocco ceased, gave a sign of
satisfaction, whistled several bars from
'Cavalleria Rusticana', and came into the
bath-room, where he took off his coat, and very
quietly washed his hands. As he stood calmly and
leisurely wiping those long fingers of his, he was
less than four feet from Racksole, and the
cooped-up millionaire trembled, holding his
breath, lest Rocco should detect his presence
behind the woodwork. But nothing happened, and
Rocco returned unsuspectingly to the bedroom.
Racksole saw him place some sort of white flannel
garment over the prone form on the table, and then
lift it bodily on to the great bed, where it lay
awfully still. The hidden watcher was sure now
that it was a corpse upon which Rocco had been
exercising his mysterious and sinister functions.
But whose corpse? And what functions?

Could this be a West End hotel, Racksole's own
hotel, in the very heart of London, the
best-policed city in the world? It seemed
incredible, impossible; yet so it was. Once more
he remembered what Félix Babylon had said
to him and realized the truth of the saying anew.
The proprietor of a vast and complicated
establishment like the Grand Babylon could never
know a tithe of the extraordinary and queer
occurrences which happened daily under his very
nose; the atmosphere of such a caravanserai must
necessarily be an atmosphere of mystery and
problems apparently inexplicable. Nevertheless,
Racksole thought that Fate was carrying things
with rather a high hand when she permitted his
chef to spend the night hours over a man's corpse
in his State bedroom, this sacred apartment which
was supposed to be occupied only by individuals of
Royal Blood. Racksole would not have objected to
a certain amount of mystery, but he decidedly
thought that there was a little too much mystery
here for his taste. He thought that even
Félix Babylon would have been surprised at
this.

The electric chandelier in the centre of the
ceiling was not lighted; only the two lights on
either side of the washstand were switched on, and
these did not sufficiently illuminate the features
of the man on the bed to enable Racksole to see
them clearly. In vain the millionaire strained
his eyes; he could only make out that the corpse
was probably that of a young man. Just as he was
wondering what would be the best course of action
to pursue, he saw Rocco with a square-shaped black
box in his hand. Then the chef switched off the
two electric lights, and the State bedroom was in
darkness. In that swift darkness Racksole heard
Rocco spring on to the bed. Another half-dozen
moments of suspense, and there was a blinding
flash of white, which endured for several seconds,
and showed Rocco standing like an evil spirit over
the corpse, the black box in one hand and a
burning piece of aluminium wire in the other. The
aluminium wire burnt out, and darkness followed
blacker than before.

Rocco had photographed the corpse by
flashlight.

But the dazzling flare which had disclosed the
features of the dead man to the insensible lens of
the camera had disclosed them also to Theodore
Racksole. The dead man was Reginald Dimmock!

Stung into action by this discovery, Racksole
tried to find the exit from his place of
concealment. He felt sure that there existed some
way out into the State bathroom, but he sought for
it fruitlessly, groping with both hands and feet.
Then he decided that he must ascend the
rope-ladder, make haste for the first-floor
corridor, and intercept Rocco when he left the
State apartments. It was a painful and difficult
business to ascend that thin and yielding ladder
in such a confined space, but Racksole was
managing it very nicely, and had nearly reached
the top, when, by some untoward freak of chance,
the ladder broke above his weight, and he slipped
ignominiously down to the bottom of the wooden
tube. Smothering an excusable curse, Racksole
crouched, baffled. Then he saw that the force of
his fall had somehow opened a trap-door at his
feet. He squeezed through, pushed open another
tiny door, and in another second stood in the
State bathroom. He was dishevelled, perspiring,
rather bewildered; but he was there. In the next
second he had resumed absolute command of all his
faculties.

Strange to say, he had moved so quietly that
Rocco had apparently not heard him. He stepped
noiselessly to the door between the bathroom and
the bedroom, and stood there in silence. Rocco
had switched on again the lights over the
washstand and was busy with his utensils.

Racksole deliberately coughed.

Chapter Fourteen

ROCCO ANSWERS SOME QUESTIONS

ROCCO turned round with the swiftness
of a startled tiger, and gave Theodore Racksole
one long piercing glance.

'D--n!' said Rocco, with as pure an Anglo-Saxon
accent and intonation as Racksole himself could
have accomplished.

The most extraordinary thing about the
situation was that at this juncture Theodore
Racksole did not know what to say. He was so
dumbfounded by the affair, and especially by
Rocco's absolute and sublime calm, that both
speech and thought failed him.

'I give in,' said Rocco. 'From the moment you
entered this cursed hotel I was afraid of you. I
told Jules I was afraid of you. I knew there
would be trouble with a man of your kidney, and I
was right; confound it! I tell you I give in. I
know when I'm beaten. I've got no revolver and no
weapons of any kind. I surrender. Do what you
like.'

And with that Rocco sat down on a chair. It
was magnificently done. Only a truly great man
could have done it. Rocco actually kept his
dignity.

For answer, Racksole walked slowly into the
vast apartment, seized a chair, and, dragging it
up to Rocco's chair, sat down opposite to him.
Thus they faced each other, their knees almost
touching, both in evening dress. On Rocco's right
hand was the bed, with the corpse of Reginald
Dimmock. On Racksole's right hand, and a little
behind him, was the marble washstand, still
littered with Rocco's implements. The electric
light shone on Rocco's left cheek, leaving the
other side of his face in shadow. Racksole tapped
him on the knee twice.

'So you're another Englishman masquerading as a
foreigner in my hotel,' Racksole remarked, by way
of commencing the interrogation.

'I'm not,' answered Rocco quietly. 'I'm a
citizen of the United States.'

'The deuce you are!' Racksole exclaimed.

'Yes, I was born at West Orange, New Jersey,
New York State. I call myself an Italian because
it was in Italy that I first made a name as a chef
- at Rome. It is better for a great chef like me
to be a foreigner. Imagine a great chef named
Elihu P. Rucker. You can't imagine it. I changed
my nationality for the same reason that my friend
and colleague, Jules, otherwise Mr Jackson,
changed his.'

'So Jules is your friend and colleague, is he?'

'He was, but from this moment he is no longer.
I began to disapprove of his methods no less than
a week ago, and my disapproval will now take
active form.'

'Will it?' said Racksole. 'I calculate it just
won't, Mr Elihu P. Rucker, citizen of the United
States. Before you are very much older you'll be
in the kind hands of the police, and your
activities, in no matter what direction, will come
to an abrupt conclusion.'

'It is possible,' sighed Rocco.

'In the meantime, I'll ask you one or two
questions for my own private satisfaction. You've
acknowledged that the game is up, and you may as
well answer them with as much candour as you feel
yourself capable of. See?'

'I see,' replied Rocco calmly, 'but I guess I
can't answer all questions. I'll do what I can.'

'Well,' said Racksole, clearing his throat,
'what's the scheme all about? Tell me in a word.'

'Not in a thousand words. It isn't my secret,
you know.'

'Why was poor little Dimmock poisoned?' The
millionaire's voice softened as he looked for an
instant at the corpse of the unfortunate young
man.

'I don't know,' said Rocco. 'I don't mind
informing you that I objected to that part of the
business. I wasn't made aware of it till after it
was done, and then I tell you it got my dander up
considerable.'

'You mean to say you don't know why Dimmock was
done to death?'

'I mean to say I couldn't see the sense of it.
Of course he - er - died, because he sort of cried
off the scheme, having previously taken a share of
it. I don't mind saying that much, because you
probably guessed it for yourself. But I solemnly
state that I have a conscientious objection to
murder.'

'Then it was murder?'

'It was a kind of murder,' Rocco admitted. Who
did it?'

'Unfair question,' said Rocco.

'Who else is in this precious scheme besides
Jules and yourself?'

'Don't know, on my honour.'

'Well, then, tell me this. What have you been
doing to Dimmock's body?'

'How long were you in that bathroom?' Rocco
parried with sublime impudence.

'Don't question me, Mr Rucker,' said Theodore
Racksole. 'I feel very much inclined to break
your back across my knee. Therefore I advise you
not to irritate me. What have you been doing to
Dimmock's body?'

'I've been embalming it.'

'Em - balming it.'

'Certainly; Richardson's system of arterial
fluid injection, as improved by myself. You
weren't aware that I included the art of embalming
among my accomplishments. Nevertheless, it is
so.'

'But why?' asked Racksole, more mystified than
ever. 'Why should you trouble to embalm the poor
chap's corpse?'

'Can't you see? Doesn't it strike you? That
corpse has to be taken care of. It contains, or
rather, it did contain, very serious evidence
against some person or persons unknown to the
police. It may be necessary to move it about from
place to place. A corpse can't be hidden for
long; a corpse betrays itself. One couldn't throw
it in the Thames, for it would have been found
inside twelve hours. One couldn't bury it - it
wasn't safe. The only thing was to keep it handy
and movable, ready for emergencies. I needn't
inform you that, without embalming, you can't keep
a corpse handy and movable for more than four or
five days. It's the kind of thing that won't
keep. And so it was suggested that I should
embalm it, and I did. Mind you, I still objected
to the murder, but I couldn't go back on a
colleague, you understand. You do understand
that, don't you? Well, here you are, and here it
is, and that's all.'

Rocco leaned back in his chair as though he had
said everything that ought to be said. He closed
his eyes to indicate that so far as he was
concerned the conversation was also closed.
Theodore Racksole stood up.

'I hope,' said Rocco, suddenly opening his
eyes, 'I hope you'll call in the police without
any delay. It's getting late, and I don't like
going without my night's rest.'

'Where do you suppose you'll get a night's
rest?' Racksole asked.

'In the cells, of course. Haven't I told you I
know when I'm beaten. I'm not so blind as not to
be able to see that there's at any rate a prima
facie case against me. I expect I shall get off
with a year or two's imprisonment as accessory
after the fact - I think that's what they call it.
Anyhow, I shall be in a position to prove that I
am not implicated in the murder of this
unfortunate nincompoop.' He pointed, with a
strange, scornful gesture of his elbow, to the
bed. 'And now, shall we go? Everyone is asleep,
but there will be a policeman within call of the
watchman in the portico. I am at your service.
Let us go down together, Mr Racksole. I give you
my word to go quietly.'

'Stay a moment,' said Theodore Racksole curtly;
'there is no hurry. It won't do you any harm to
forego another hour's sleep, especially as you
will have no work to do to-morrow. I have one or
two more questions to put to you.'

'Well?' Rocco murmured, with an air of tired
resignation, as if to say, 'What must be must be.'

'Where has Dimmock's corpse been during the
last three or four days, since he - died?'

'Oh!' answered Rocco, apparently surprised at
the simplicity of the question. 'It's been in my
room, and one night it was on the roof; once it
went out of the hotel as luggage, but it came back
the next day as a case of Demerara sugar. I
forgot where else it has been, but it's been kept
perfectly safe and treated with every
consideration.'

'And who contrived all these manoeuvres?' asked
Racksole as calmly as he could.

'I did. That is to say, I invented them and I
saw that they were carried out. You see, the
suspicions of your police obliged me to be
particularly spry.'

'And who carried them out?'

'Ah! that would be telling tales. But I don't
mind assuring you that my accomplices were
innocent accomplices. It is absurdly easy for a
man like me to impose on underlings - absurdly
easy.'

'What did you intend to do with the corpse
ultimately?' Racksole pursued his inquiry with
immovable countenance.

'Who knows?' said Rocco, twisting his beautiful
moustache. 'That would have depended on several
things - on your police, for instance. But
probably in the end we should have restored this
mortal clay' - again he jerked his elbow - 'to the
man's sorrowing relatives.'

'Do you know who the relatives are?'

'Certainly. Don't you? If you don't I need
only hint that Dimmock had a Prince for his
father.'

'It seems to me,' said Racksole, with cold
sarcasm, 'that you behaved rather clumsily in
choosing this bedroom as the scene of your
operations.'

'Not at all,' said Rocco. 'There was no other
apartment so suitable in the whole hotel. Who
would have guessed that anything was going on
here? It was the very place for me.'

'I guessed,' said Racksole succinctly.

'Yes, you guessed, Mr Racksole. But I had not
counted on you. You are the only smart man in the
business. You are an American citizen, and I
hadn't reckoned to have to deal with that class of
person.'

'Apparently I frightened you this afternoon?'

'Not in the least.'

'You were not afraid of a search?'

'I knew that no search was intended. I knew
that you were trying to frighten me. You must
really credit me with a little sagacity and
insight, Mr Racksole. Immediately you began to
talk to me in the kitchen this afternoon I felt
you were on the track. But I was not frightened.
I merely decided that there was no time to be lost
- that I must act quickly. I did act quickly,
but, it seems, not quickly enough. I grant that
your rapidity exceeded mine. Let us go
downstairs, I beg.'

Rocco rose and moved towards the door. With an
instinctive action Racksole rushed forward and
seized him by the shoulder.

Rocco turned on his employer a look of gentle,
dignified scorn. 'Have I not informed you,' he
said, 'that I have the intention of going
quietly?'

Racksole felt almost ashamed for the moment.
It flashed across him that a man can be great,
even in crime.

'What an ineffable fool you were,' said
Racksole, stopping him at the threshold, 'with
your talents, your unique talents, to get yourself
mixed up in an affair of this kind. You are
ruined. And, by Jove! you were a great man in
your own line.'

'Mr Racksole,' said Rocco very quickly, 'that
is the truest word you have spoken this night. I
was a great man in my own line. And I am an
ineffable fool. Alas!' He brought his long arms
to his sides with a thud.

'Why did you do it?'

'I was fascinated - fascinated by Jules. He,
too, is a great man. We had great opportunities,
here in the Grand Babylon. It was a great game.
It was worth the candle. The prizes were
enormous. You would admit these things if you
knew the facts. Perhaps some day you will know
them, for you are a fairly clever person at
getting to the root of a matter. Yes, I was
blinded, hypnotized.'

'And now you are ruined.'

'Not ruined, not ruined. Afterwards, in a few
years, I shall come up again. A man of genius
like me is never ruined till he is dead. Genius
is always forgiven. I shall be forgiven. Suppose
I am sent to prison. When I emerge I shall be no
gaol-bird. I shall be Rocco - the great Rocco.
And half the hotels in Europe will invite me to
join them.'

'Let me tell you, as man to man, that you have
achieved your own degradation. There is no
excuse.'

'I know it,' said Rocco. 'Let us go.'

Racksole was distinctly and notably impressed
by this man - by this master spirit to whom he was
to have paid a salary at the rate of three
thousand pounds a year. He even felt sorry for
him. And so, side by side, the captor and the
captured, they passed into the vast deserted
corridor of the hotel. Rocco stopped at the
grating of the first lift.

'It will be locked,' said Racksole. 'We must
use the stairs to-night.'

'But I have a key. I always carry one,' said
Rocco, and he pulled one out of his pocket, and,
unfastening the iron screen, pushed it open.
Racksole smiled at his readiness and aplomb.

'After you,' said Rocco, bowing in his finest
manner, and Racksole stepped into the lift.

With the swiftness of lighting Rocco pushed
forward the iron screen, which locked itself
automatically. Theodore Racksole was hopelessly a
prisoner within the lift, while Rocco stood free
in the corridor.

'Good-bye, Mr Racksole,' he remarked suavely,
bowing again, lower than before. 'Good-bye: I
hate to take a mean advantage of you in this
fashion, but really you must allow that you have
been very simple. You are a clever man, as I have
already said, up to a certain point. It is past
that point that my own cleverness comes in.
Again, good-bye. After all, I shall have no rest
to-night, but perhaps even that will be better
that sleeping in a police cell. If you make a
great noise you may wake someone and ultimately
get released from this lift. But I advise you to
compose yourself, and wait till morning. It will
be more dignified. For the third time, good-bye.'

And with that Rocco, without hastening, walked
down the corridor and so out of sight.

Racksole said never a word. He was too
disgusted with himself to speak. He clenched his
fists, and put his teeth together, and held his
breath. In the silence he could hear the
dwindling sound of Rocco's footsteps on the thick
carpet.

It was the greatest blow of Racksole's life.

The next morning the high-born guests of the
Grand Babylon were aroused by a rumour that by
some accident the millionaire proprietor of the
hotel had remained all night locked up m the lift.
It was also stated that Rocco had quarrelled with
his new master and incontinently left the place.
A duchess said that Rocco's departure would mean
the ruin of the hotel, whereupon her husband
advised her not to talk nonsense.

As for Racksole, he sent a message for the
detective in charge of the Dimmock affair, and
bravely told him the happenings of the previous
night. The narration was a decided ordeal to a
man of Racksole's temperament.

'A strange story!' commented Detective
Marshall, and he could not avoid a smile. 'The
climax was unfortunate, but you have certainly got
some valuable facts.'

Racksole said nothing.

'I myself have a clue,' added the detective.
When your message arrived I was just coming up to
see you. I want you to accompany me to a certain
spot not far from here. Will you come, now, at
once?'

'With pleasure,' said Racksole.

At that moment a page entered with a telegram.
Racksole opened it read: 'Please come instantly.
Nella. Hotel Wellington, Ostend.'

Chapter Fifteen

END OF THE YACHT ADVENTURE

WE must now return to Nella Racksole
and Prince Aribert of Posen on board the yacht
without a name. The Prince's first business was
to make Jules, otherwise Mr Tom Jackson, perfectly
secure by means of several pieces of rope.
Although Mr Jackson had been stunned into a
complete unconsciousness, and there was a contused
wound under his ear, no one could say how soon he
might not come to himself and get very violent.
So the Prince, having tied his arms and legs, made
him fast to a stanchion.

'I hope he won't die,' said Nella. 'He looks
very white.'

'The Mr Jacksons of this world,' said Prince
Aribert sententiously, 'never die till they are
hung. By the way, I wonder how it is that no one
has interfered with us. Perhaps they are
discreetly afraid of my revolver - of your
revolver, I mean.'

Both he and Nella glanced up at the
imperturbable steersman, who kept the yacht's head
straight out to sea. By this time they were about
a couple of miles from the Belgian shore.

Addressing him in French, the Prince ordered
the sailor to put the yacht about, and make again
for Ostend Harbour, but the fellow took no notice
whatever of the summons. The Prince raised the
revolver, with the idea of frightening the
steersman, and then the man began to talk rapidly
in a mixture of French and Flemish. He said that
he had received Jules' strict orders not to
interfere in any way, no matter what might happen
on the deck of the yacht. He was the captain of
the yacht, and he had to make for a certain
English port, the name of which he could not
divulge: he was to keep the vessel at full steam
ahead under any and all circumstances. He seemed
to be a very big, a very strong, and a very
determined man, and the Prince was at a loss what
course of action to pursue. He asked several more
questions, but the only effect of them was to
render the man taciturn and ill-humoured. In vain
Prince Aribert explained that Miss Nella Racksole,
daughter of millionaire Racksole, had been
abducted by Mr Tom Jackson; in vain he flourished
the revolver threateningly; the surly but
courageous captain said merely that that had
nothing to do with him; he had instructions, and
he should carry them out. He sarcastically begged
to remind his interlocutor that he was the captain
of the yacht.

'It won't do to shoot him, I suppose,' said the
Prince to Nella. 'I might bore a hole into his
leg, or something of that kind.'

'It's rather risky, and rather hard on the poor
captain, with his extraordinary sense of duty,'
said Nella. 'And, besides, the whole crew might
turn on us. No, we must think of something else.'

'I wonder where the crew is,' said the Prince.

Just then Mr Jackson, prone and bound on the
deck, showed signs of recovering from his swoon.
His eyes opened, and he gazed vacantly around. At
length he caught sight of the Prince,
who approached him with the revolver well in
view.

'It's you, is it?' he murmured faintly. 'What
are you doing on board? Who's tied me up like
this?'

'See here!' replied the Prince, 'I don't want
to have any arguments, but this yacht must return
to Ostend at once, where you will be given up to
the authorities.'

'Really!' snarled Mr Tom Jackson. 'Shall I!'
Then he called out in French to the man at the
wheel, 'Hi André! let these two be put off
in the dinghy.'

It was a peculiar situation. Certain of
nothing but the possession of Nella's revolver,
the Prince scarcely knew whether to carry the
argument further, and with stronger measures, or
to accept the situation with as much dignity as
the circumstances
would permit.

'Let us take the dinghy,' said Nella; 'we can
row ashore in an hour.'

He felt that she was right. To leave the yacht
in such a manner
seemed somewhat ignominious, and it certainly
involved the escape of that profound villain, Mr
Thomas Jackson. But what else could be done? The
Prince and Nella constituted one party
on the vessel; they knew their own strength, but
they did not know the strength of their
opponents. They held the hostile ringleader bound
and captive, but this man had proved himself
capable of giving orders, and even to gag him
would not help them if the captain of the yacht
persisted in his obstinate course. Moreover,
there was a distinct objection to promiscuous
shooting; the Prince felt that; there was no
knowing how promiscuous shooting might end.

'We will take the dinghy,' said the Prince
quickly, to the captain.

A bell rang below, and a sailor and the Negro
boy appeared on deck. The pulsations of the screw
grew less rapid. The yacht stopped. The dinghy
was lowered. As the Prince and Nella prepared to
descend into the little cock-boat Mr Tom Jackson
addressed Nella, all bound as he lay.

'Good-bye,' he said, 'I shall see you again,
never fear.' .

In another moment they were in the dinghy, and
the dinghy was adrift. The yacht's screw chumed
the water, and the beautiful vessel slipped away
from them. As it receded a figure appeared at the
stem. It was Mr Thomas Jackson. He had been
released by his minions. He held a white
handkerchief to his ear, and offered a calm,
enigmatic smile to the two forlorn but victorious
occupants of the dinghy. Jules had been defeated
for once in his life; or perhaps it would be more
just to say that he had been out-manoeuvred. Men
like Jules are incapable of being defeated. It
was characteristic of his luck that now, in the
very hour when he had been caught red-handed in a
serious crime against society, he should be
effecting a leisurely escape - an escape which
left no clue behind.

The sea was utterly calm and blue in the
morning sun. The dinghy rocked itself lazily in
the swell of the yacht's departure. As the mist
cleared away the outline of the shore became more
distinct, and it appeared as if Ostend was distant
scarcely a cable's length. The white dome of the
great Kursaal glittered in the pale turquoise sky,
and the smoke of steamers in the harbour could be
plainly distinguished. On the offing was a crowd
of brown-sailed fishing luggers returning with the
night's catch. The many-hued bathing-vans could
be counted on the distant beach. Everything
seemed perfectly normal. It was difficult for
either Nella or her companion to realize that
anything extraordinary had happened within the
last hour. Yet there was the yacht, not a mile
off, to prove to them that something very
extraordinary had, in fact, happened. The yacht
was no vision, nor was that sinister watching
figure at its stern a vision, either.

'I suppose Jules was too surprised and too
feeble to inquire how I came to be on board his
yacht,' said the Prince, taking the oars.

'Oh! How did you?' asked Nella, her face
lighting up. 'Really, I had almost forgotten that
part of the affair.'

'I must begin at the beginning and it will take
some time,' answered the Prince. 'Had we not
better postpone the recital till we get ashore?'

'I will row and you shall talk,' said Nella.
'I want to know now.'

He smiled happily at her, but gently declined
to yield up the oars.

'Is it not sufficient that I am here?' he said.

'It is sufficient, yes,' she replied, 'but I
want to know.'

With a long, easy stroke he was pulling the
dinghy shorewards. She sat in the stern-sheets.

'There is no rudder,' he remarked, 'so you must
direct me. Keep the boat's head on the
lighthouse. The tide seems to be running in
strongly; that will help us. The people on shore
will think that we have only been for a little
early morning excursion.'

'Will you kindly tell me how it came about that
you were able to save my life, Prince?' she said.

'You saved my life,' she repeated. 'That
villain would have stopped at nothing. I saw it
in his eye.'

'Then you were a brave woman, for you showed no
fear of death.' His admiring gaze rested full on
her. For a moment the oars ceased to move.

She gave a gesture of impatience.

'It happened that I saw you last night in your
carriage,' he said. 'The fact is, I had not had
the audacity to go to Berlin with my story. I
stopped in Ostend to see whether I could do a
little detective work on my own account. It was a
piece of good luck that I saw you. I followed the
carriage as quickly as I could, and I just caught
a glimpse of you as you entered that awful house.
I knew that Jules had something to do with that
house. I guessed what you were doing. I was
afraid for you. Fortunately I had surveyed the
house pretty thoroughly. There is an entrance to
it at the back, from a narrow lane. I made my way
there. I got into the yard at the back, and I
stood under the window of the room where you had
the interview with Miss Spencer. I heard
everything that was said. It was a courageous
enterprise on your part to follow Miss Spencer
from the Grand Babylon to Ostend. Well, I dared
not force an entrance, lest I might precipitate
matters too suddenly, and involve both of us in a
difficulty. I merely kept watch. Ah, Miss
Racksole! you were magnificent with Miss Spencer;
as I say, I could hear every word, for the window
was slightly open. I felt that you needed no
assistance from me. And then she cheated you with
a trick, and the revolver came flying through the
window. I picked it up, I thought it would
probably be useful. There was a silence. I did
not guess at first that you had fainted. I
thought that you had escaped. When I found out
the truth it was too late for me to intervene.
There were two men, both desperate, besides Miss
Spencer - '

'Who was the other man?' asked Nella.

'I do not know. It was dark. They drove away
with you to the harbour. Again I followed. I saw
them carry you on board. Before the yacht weighed
anchor I managed to climb unobserved into the
dinghy. I lay down full length in it, and no one
suspected that I was there. I think you know the
rest.'

'Was the yacht all ready for sea?'

'The yacht was all ready for sea. The captain
fellow was on the bridge, and steam was up.'

'Then they expected me! How could that be?'

'They expected some one. I do not think they
expected you.'

'Did the second man go on board?'

'He helped to carry you along the gangway, but
he came back again to the carriage. He was the
driver.'

'And no one else saw the business?'

'The quay was deserted. You see, the last
steamer had arrived for the night.'

There was a brief silence, and then Nella
ejaculated, under her breath. 'Truly, it is a
wonderful world!'

And it was a wonderful world for them, though
scarcely perhaps, in the sense which Nella
Racksole had intended. They had just emerged from
a highly disconcerting experience. Among other
minor inconveniences, they had had no breakfast.
They were out in the sea in a tiny boat. Neither
of them knew what the day might bring forth. The
man, at least, had the most serious anxieties for
the safety of his Royal nephew. And yet - and yet
- neither of them wished that that voyage of the
little
boat on the summer tide should come to an end.
Each, perhaps unconsciously, had a vague desire
that it might last for ever, he lazily pulling,
she directing his course at intervals by a
movement of her distractingly pretty head. How
was this condition of affairs to be explained?
Well, they were both young; they both had superb
health, and all the ardour of youth; and - they
were together. The boat was very small indeed;
her face was scarcely a yard from his. She, in
his eyes, surrounded by the glamour of beauty and
vast wealth; he, in her eyes, surrounded by the
glamour of masculine intrepidity and the
brilliance of a throne.

But all voyages come to an end, either at the
shore or at the bottom of the sea, and at length
the dinghy passed between the stone jetties of the
harbour. The Prince rowed to the nearest steps,
tied up the boat, and they landed. It was six
o'clock in the morning, and a day of gorgeous
sunlight had opened. Few people were about at
that early hour.

'And now, what next?' said the Prince. 'I must
take you to an hotel.'

'I am in your hands,' she acquiesced, with a
smile which sent the blood racing through his
veins. He perceived now that she was tired and
overcome, suffering from a sudden and natural
reaction.

At the Hôtel Wellington the Prince told
the sleepy door-keeper that they had come by the
early train from Bruges, and wanted breakfast at
once. It was absurdly early, but a common English
sovereign will work wonders in any Belgian hotel,
and in a very brief time Nella and the Prince were
breakfasting on the verandah of the hotel upon
chocolate that had been specially and hastily
brewed for them.

'I never tasted such excellent chocolate,'
claimed the Prince.

The statement was wildly untrue, for the
Hôtel Wellington is not celebrated for its
chocolate. Nevertheless Nella replied
enthusiastically, 'Nor I.' Then there was a
silence, and Nella, feeling possibly that she had
been too ecstatic, remarked in a very
matter-of-fact tone: 'I must telegraph to Papa
instantly.'

Thus it was that Theodore Racksole received the
telegram which drew him away from Detective
Marshall.

Chapter Sixteen

THE WOMAN WITH THE RED HAT

'THERE is one thing, Prince, that we
have just got to settle straight off,' said
Theodore Racksole.

They were all three seated - Racksole, his
daughter, and Prince Aribert - round a dinner
table in a private room at the Hôtel
Wellington. Racksole had duly arrived by the
afternoon boat, and had been met on the quay by
the other two. They had dined early, and Racksole
had heard the full story of the adventures by sea
and land of Nella and the Prince. As to his own
adventure of the previous night he said very
little, merely explaining, with as little detail
as possible, that Dimmock's body had come to
light.

'What is that?' asked the Prince, in answer to
Racksole's remark.

'We have got to settle whether we shall tell
the police at once all that has occurred, or
whether we shall proceed on our own
responsibility. There can be no doubt as to which
course we ought to pursue. Every consideration of
prudence points to the advisability of taking the
police into our confidence, and leaving the
matter entirely in their hands.'

'Oh, Papa!' Nella burst out in her pouting,
impulsive way. 'You surely can't think of such a
thing. Why, the fun has only just begun.'

'Do you call last night fun?' questioned
Racksole, gazing at her solemnly.

'Yes, I do,' she said promptly. 'Now.'

'Well, I don't,' was the millionaire's laconic
response; but perhaps he was thinking of his own
situation in the lift.

'Do you not think we might investigate a little
further,' said the Prince judiciously, as he
cracked a walnut, 'just a little further - and
then, if we fail to accomplish anything, there
would still be ample opportunity to consult the
police?'

'How do you suggest we should begin?' asked
Racksole.

'Well, there is the house which Miss Racksole
so intrepidly entered last evening' - he gave her
the homage of an admiring glance; 'you and I, Mr
Racksole, might examine that abode in detail.'

'To-night?'

'Certainly. We might do something.'

'We might do too much.'

'For example?'

'We might shoot someone, or get ourselves
mistaken for burglars. If we outstepped the law,
it would be no excuse for us that we had been
acting in a good cause.'

'True,' said the Prince. 'Nevertheless - ' He
stopped.

'Nevertheless you have a distaste for bringing
the police into the business. You want the hunt
all to yourself. You are on fire with the ardour
of the chase. Is not that it? Accept the advice
of an older man, Prince, and sleep on this affair.
I have little fancy for nocturnal escapades two
nights together. As for you, Nella, off with you
to bed. The Prince and I will have a yarn over
such fluids as can be obtained in this hole.'

'Papa,' she said, 'you are perfectly horrid
to-night.'

'Perhaps I am,' he said. 'Decidedly I am very
cross with you for coming over here all alone. It
was monstrous. If I didn't happen to be the most
foolish of parents - There! Good-night. It's
nine o'clock. The Prince, I am sure, will excuse
you.'

If Nella had not really been very tired Prince
Aribert might have been the witness of a
good-natured but stubborn conflict between the
millionaire and his spirited offspring. As it
was, Nella departed with surprising docility, and
the two men were left alone.

'Now,' said Racksole suddenly, changing his
tone, 'I fancy that after all I'm your man for a
little amateur investigation to-night. And, if I
must speak the exact truth, I think that to sleep
on this affair would be about the very worst thing
we could do. But I was anxious to keep Nella out
of harm's way at any rate till to-morrow. She is
a very difficult creature to manage, Prince, and I
may warn you,' he laughed grimly, 'that if we do
succeed in doing anything to-night we shall catch
it from her ladyship in the morning. Are you
ready to take that risk?'

'I am,' the Prince smiled. 'But Miss Racksole
is a young lady of quite remarkable nerve.'

'She is,' said Racksole drily. 'I wish
sometimes she had less.'

'I have the highest admiration for Miss
Racksole,' said the Prince, and he looked Miss
Racksole's father full in the face.

'You honour us, Prince,' Racksole observed.
'Let us come to business. Am I right in assuming
that you have a reason for keeping the police out
of this business, if it can possibly be done?'

'Yes,' said the Prince, and his brow clouded.
'I am very much afraid that my poor nephew has
involved himself in some scrape that he would wish
not to be divulged.'

'Then you do not believe that he is the victim
of foul play?'

'I do not.'

'And the reason, if I may ask it?'

'Mr Racksole, we speak in confidence - is it
not so? Some years ago my foolish nephew had an
affair - an affair with a feminine star of the
Berlin stage. For anything I know, the lady may
have been the very pattern of her sex, but where a
reigning Prince is concerned scandal cannot be
avoided in such a matter. I had thought that the
affair was quite at an end, since my nephew's
betrothal to Princess Anna of
Eckstein-Schwartzburg is shortly to be announced.
But yesterday I saw the lady to whom I have
referred driving on the Digue. The coincidence of
her presence here with my nephew's disappearance
is too extraordinary to be disregarded.'

'But how does this theory square with the
murder of Reginald Dimmock?'

'It does not square with it. My idea is that
the murder of poor Dimmock and the disappearance
of my nephew are entirely unconnected - unless,
indeed, this Berlin actress is playing into the
hands of the murderers. I had not thought of
that.'

'Then what do you propose to do to-night?'

'I propose to enter the house which Miss
Racksole entered last night and to find out
something definite.'

'Nevertheless, he does,' said Racksole calmly.
Then he told him all he had learnt from Mr Sampson
Levi.

'What have you to say to that?' Racksole ended.
Prince Aribert made no reply.

'What have you to say to that?' Racksole
insisted.

'Merely that Eugen is ruined, even if he is
alive.'

'Not at all,' Racksole returned with
cheerfulness. 'Not at all. We shall see about
that. The special thing that I want to know just
now from you is this: Has any previous application
ever been made for the hand of the Princess Anna?'

'Yes. Last year. The King of Bosnia sued for
it, but his proposal was declined.'

'Why?'

'Because my nephew was considered to be a more
suitable match for her.'

'Not because the personal character of his
Majesty of Bosnia is scarcely of the brightest?'

'No. Unfortunately it is usually impossible to
consider questions of personal character when a
royal match is concerned.'

'Then, if for any reason the marriage of
Princess Anna with your nephew was frustrated, the
King of Bosnia would have a fair chance in that
quarter?'

'He would. The political aspect of things
would be perfectly satisfactory.'

'Thanks!' said Racksole. 'I will wager another
hundred thousand dollars that someone in Bosnia -
I don't accuse the King himself - is at the bottom
of this business. The methods of Balkan
politicians have always been half-Oriental. Let
us go.'

'Where?'

'To this precious house of Nella's adventure.'

'But surely it is too early?'

'So it is,' said Racksole, 'and we shall want a
few things, too. For instance, a dark lantern. I
think I will go out and forage for a lantern.'

'And a revolver?' suggested Prince Aribert.

'Does it mean revolvers?' The millionaire
laughed. 'It may come to that.'

'Here you are, then, my friend,' said Racksole,
and he pulled one out of his hip pocket. 'And
yours?'

'I,' said the Prince, 'I have your daughter's.'

'The deuce you have!' murmured Racksole to
himself.

It was then half past nine. They decided that
it would be impolitic to begin their operations
till after midnight. There were three hours to
spare.

'Let us go and see the gambling,' Racksole
suggested. 'We might encounter the Berlin lady.'

The suggestion, in the first instance, was not
made seriously, but it appeared to both men that
they might do worse than spend the intervening
time in the gorgeous saloon of the Kursaal, where,
in the season, as much money is won and lost as at
Monte Carlo. It was striking ten o'clock as they
entered the rooms. There was a large company
present - a company which included some of the
most notorious persons in Europe. In that
multifarious assemblage all were equal. The
electric light shone coldly and impartially on the
just and on the unjust, on the fool and the knave,
on the European and the Asiatic. As usual, women
monopolized the best places at the tables. The
scene was familiar
enough to Prince Aribert, who had witnessed it
frequently at Monaco, but Theodore Racksole had
never before entered any European gaming palace;
he had only the haziest idea of the rules of play,
and he was at once interested. For some time they
watched the play at the table which happened to be
nearest to them. Racksole never moved his lips.
With his eyes glued on the table, and ears open
for every remark, of the players and the croupier,
he took his first lesson in roulette. He saw a
mere
youth win fifteen thousand francs, which were
stolen in the most barefaced mariner by a rouged
girl scarcely older than the youth; he saw two old
gamesters stake their coins, and lose, and walk
quietly out of the place; he saw the bank win
fifty thousand francs at a single turn.

'This is rather good fun,' he said at length,
'but the stakes are too small to make it really
exciting. I'll try my luck, just for the
experience. I'm bound to win.'

'Why?' asked the Prince.

'Because I always do, in games of chance,'
Racksole answered with gay confidence. 'It is my
fate. Then to-night, you must remember, I shall
be a beginner, and you know the tyro's luck.'

In ten minutes the croupier of that table was
obliged to suspend operations pending the arrival
of a further supply of coin.

'What did I tell you?' said Racksole, leading
the way to another table further up the room. A
hundred curious glances went after him. One old
woman, whose gay attire suggested a false
youthfulness, begged him in French to stake a
five-franc piece for her. She offered him the
coin. He took it, and gave her a hundred-franc
note in exchange. She clutched the crisp rustling
paper, and with hysterical haste scuttled back to
her own table.

At the second table there was a considerable
air of excitement. In the forefront of the
players was a woman in a low-cut evening dress of
black silk and a large red picture hat. Her age
appeared to be about twenty-eight; she had dark
eyes, full lips, and a distinctly Jewish nose.
She was handsome, but her beauty was of that
forbidding, sinister order which is often called
Junoesque. This woman was the centre of
attraction. People said to each other that she
had won a hundred and sixty thousand francs that
day at the table.

'Keep behind her, then. I propose to find her
a little occupation.' By dint of a
carefully-exercised diplomacy, Racksole manoeuvred
himself into a seat opposite to the lady in the
red hat. The fame of his success at the other
table had followed him, and people regarded him as
a serious and formidable player. In the first
turn the lady put a thousand francs on double
zero; Racksole put a hundred on number nineteen
and a thousand on the odd numbers. Nineteen won.
Racksole received four thousand four hundred
francs. Nine times in succession Racksole backed
number nineteen and the odd numbers; nine times
the lady backed double zero. Nine times Racksole
won and the lady lost. The other players,
perceiving that the affair had resolved itself
into a duel, stood back for the most part and
watched those two. Prince Aribert never stirred
from his position behind the great red hat. The
game continued. Racksole lost trifles from time
to time, but ninety-nine hundredths of the luck
was with him. As an English spectator at the
table remarked, 'he couldn't do wrong.' When
midnight struck the lady in the red hat was
reduced to a thousand francs. Then she fell into
a winning vein for half an hour, but at one
o'clock her resources were exhausted. Of the
hundred and sixty thousand francs which she was
reputed to have had early in the evening, Racksole
held about ninety thousand, and the bank had the
rest. It was a calamity for the Juno of the red
hat. She jumped up, stamped her foot, and hurried
from the room. At a discreet distance Racksole
and the Prince pursued her.

'It might be well to ascertain her movements,'
said Racksole.

Outside, in the glare of the great arc lights,
and within sound of the surf which beats always at
the very foot of the Kursaal, the Juno of the red
hat summoned a fiacre and drove rapidly away.
Racksole and the Prince took an open carriage and
started in pursuit. They had not, however,
travelled more than half a mile when Prince
Aribert stopped the carriage, and, bidding
Racksole get out, paid the driver and dismissed
him.

'I feel sure I know where she is going,' he
explained, 'and it will be better for us to follow
on foot.'

'You mean she is making for the scene of last
night's affair?' said Racksole.

'Exactly. We shall - what you call, kill two
birds with one stone.'

Prince Aribert's guess was correct. The lady's
carriage stopped in front of the house where Nella
Racksole and Miss Spencer had had their interview
on the previous evening, and the lady vanished
into the building just as the two men appeared at
the end of the street. Instead of proceeding
along that street, the Prince led Racksole to the
lane which gave on to the backs of the houses, and
he counted the houses as they went up the lane.
In a few minutes they had burglariously climbed
over a wall, and crept, with infinite caution, up
a long, narrow piece of ground - half garden, half
paved yard, till they crouched under a window - a
window which was shielded by curtains, but which
had been left open a little.

'Listen,' said the Prince in his lightest
whisper, 'they are talking.'

Silently they exchanged places under the
window, and the Prince listened intently.

'Then you refuse?' Miss Spencer's visitor was
saying.

There was no answer from Miss Spencer.

'Not even a thousand francs? I tell you I've
lost the whole twenty-five thousand.'

Again no answer.

'Then I'll tell the whole story,' the lady went
on, in an angry rush of words. 'I did what I
promised to do. I enticed him here, and you've
got him safe in your vile cellar, poor little man,
and you won't give me a paltry thousand francs.'

'You have already had your price.' The words
were Miss Spencer's. They fell cold and calm on
the night air.

'I want another thousand.'

'I haven't it.'

'Then we'll see.'

Prince Aribert heard a rustle of flying skirts;
then another movement - a door banged, and the
beam of light through the aperture of the window
suddenly disappeared. He pushed the window wide
open. The room was in darkness, and apparently
empty.

'Now for that lantern of yours,' he said
eagerly to Theodore Racksole, after he had
translated to him the conversation of the two
women,

Racksole produced the dark lantern from the
capacious pocket of his dust coat, and lighted it.
The ray flashed about the ground.

'What is it?' exclaimed Prince Aribert with a
swift cry, pointing to the ground. The lantern
threw its light on a perpendicular grating at
their feet, through which could be discerned a
cellar. They both knelt down, and peered into the
subterranean chamber. On a broken chair a young
man sat listlessly with closed eyes, his head
leaning heavily forward on his chest. In the
feeble light of the lantern he had the livid and
ghastly appearance of a corpse.

'Who can it be?' said Racksole.

'It is Eugen,' was the Prince's low answer.

Chapter Seventeen

THE RELEASE OF PRINCE EUGEN

'EUGEN,' Prince Aribert called
softly. At the sound of his own name the young
man in the cellar feebly raised his head and
stared up at the grating which separated him from
his two rescuers. But his features showed no
recognition. He gazed in an aimless, vague, silly
manner for a few seconds, his eyes blinking under
the glare of the lantern, and then his head slowly
drooped again on to his chest. He was dressed in
a dark tweed travelling suit, and Racksole
observed that one sleeve - the left - was torn
across the upper part of the cuff, and that there
were stains of dirt on the left shoulder. A
soiled linen collar, which had lost all its starch
and was half unbuttoned, partially encircled the
captive's neck; his brown boots were unlaced; a
cap, a handkerchief, a portion of a watch-chain,
and a few gold coins lay on the floor. Racksole
flashed the lantern into the corners of the
cellar, but he could discover no other furniture
except the chair on which the Hereditary Prince of
Posen sat and a small deal table on which were a
plate and a cup.

'Eugen,' cried Prince Aribert once more, but
this time his forlorn nephew made no response
whatever, and then Aribert added in a low voice to
Racksole: 'Perhaps he cannot see us clearly.'

'But he must surely recognize your voice,' said
Racksole, in a hard, gloomy tone. There was a
pause, and the two men above ground looked at each
other hesitatingly. Each knew that they must
enter that cellar and get Prince Eugen out of it,
and each was somehow afraid to take the next step.

'Thank God he is not dead!' said Aribert.

'He may be worse than dead!' Racksole replied.

'Worse than - What do you mean?'

'I mean - he may be mad.'

'Come,' Aribert almost shouted, with a sudden
access of energy - a wild impulse for action.
And, snatching the lantern from Racksole, he
rushed into the dark room where they had heard the
conversation of Miss Spencer and the lady in the
red hat. For a moment Racksole did not stir from
the threshold of the window. 'Come,' Prince
Aribert repeated, and there was an imperious
command in his utterance. 'What are you afraid
of?'

'I don't know,' said Racksole, feeling stupid
and queer; 'I don't know.' Then he marched heavily
after Prince Aribert into the room. On the
mantelpiece were a couple of candles which had
been blown out, and in a mechanical, unthinking
way, Racksole lighted them, and the two men
glanced round the room. It presented no peculiar
features: it was just an ordinary room, rather
small, rather mean, rather shabby, with an ugly
wallpaper and ugly pictures in ugly frames.
Thrown over a chair was a man's evening-dress
jacket. The door was closed. Prince Aribert
turned the knob, but he could not open it.

'It's locked,' he said. 'Evidently they know
we're here.'

'Nonsense,' said Racksole brusquely; 'how can
they know?' And, taking hold of the knob, he
violently shook the door, and it opened. 'I told
you it wasn't locked,' he added, and this small
success of opening the door seemed to steady the
man. It was a curious psychological effect, this
terrorizing (for it amounted to that) of two
courageous full-grown men by the mere apparition
of a helpless creature in a cellar. Gradually
they both recovered from it. The next moment they
were out in the passage which led to the front
door of the house. The front door stood open.
They looked into the street, up and down, but
there was not a soul in sight. The street,
lighted by three gas-lamps only, seemed strangely
sinister and mysterious.

'She has gone, that's clear,' said Racksole,
meaning the woman with the red hat.

'And Miss Spencer after her, do you think?'
questioned Aribert.

'No. She would stay. She would never dare to
leave. Let us find the cellar steps.'

The cellar steps were happily not difficult to
discover, for in moving a pace backwards Prince
Aribert had a narrow escape of precipitating
himself to the bottom of them. The lantern showed
that they were built on a curve. Silently
Racksole resumed possession of the lantern and
went first, the Prince close behind him. At the
foot was a short passage, and in this passage
crouched the figure of a woman. Her eyes threw
back the rays of the lantern, shining like a cat's
at midnight. Then, as the men went nearer, they
saw that it was Miss Spencer who barred their way.
She seemed half to kneel on the stone floor, and
in one hand she held what at first appeared to be
a dagger, but which proved to be nothing more
romantic than a rather long bread-knife.

There was a desperate and dangerous look on her
face, and her form shook with scarcely controlled
passionate energy.

'Now see here, Miss Spencer,' Racksole said
calmly, 'I guess we've had enough of this
fandango. You'd better get up and clear out, or
we'll just have to drag you off.'

He went calmly up to her, the lantern in his
hand. Without another word she struck the knife
into his arm, and the lantern fell extinguished.
Racksole gave a cry, rather of angry surprise than
of pain, and retreated a few steps. In the
darkness they
could still perceive the glint of her eyes.

'I told you you mustn't come here,' the woman
said. 'Now get back.'

Racksole positively laughed. It was a queer
laugh, but he laughed, and he could not help it.
The idea of this woman, this bureau clerk,
stopping his progress and that of Prince Aribert
by means of a bread-knife aroused his sense of
humour. He struck a match, relighted the candle,
and faced Miss Spencer once more.

'I'll do it again,' she said, with a note of
hard resolve.

'Oh, no, you won't, my girl,' said Racksole;
and he pulled out his revolver, cocked it, raised
his hand.

'Put down that plaything of yours,' he said
firmly.

'No,' she answered.

'I shall shoot.'

She pressed her lips together.

'I shall shoot,' he repeated. 'One - two -
three.'

Bang, bang! He had fired twice, purposely
missing her. Miss Spencer never blenched.
Racksole was tremendously surprised - and he would
have been a thousandfold more surprised could he
have contrasted her behaviour now with her abject
terror on the previous evening when Nella had
threatened her.

'You've got a bit of pluck,' he said, 'but it
won't help you. Why won't you let us pass?'

As a matter of fact, pluck was just what she
had not, really; she had merely subordinated one
terror to another. She was desperately afraid of
Racksole's revolver, but she was much more afraid
of something else.

'Why won't you let us pass?'

'I daren't,' she said, with a plaintive tremor;
'Tom put me in charge.'

That was all. The men could see tears running
down her poor wrinkled face. Theodore Racksole
began to take off his light overcoat.

'I see I must take my coat off to you,' he
said, and he almost smiled. Then, with a quick
movement, he threw the coat over Miss Spencer's
head and flew at her, seizing both her arms, while
Prince Aribert assisted.

Her struggles ceased - she was beaten.

'That's all right,' said Racksole: 'I could
never have used that revolver - to mean business
with it, of course.'

They carried her, unresisting, upstairs and on
to the upper floor, where they locked her in a
bedroom. She lay in the bed as if exhausted.

'Now for my poor Eugen,' said Prince Aribert.

'Don't you think we'd better search the house
first?' Racksole suggested; 'it will be safer to
know just how we stand. We can't afford any
ambushes or things of that kind, you know.'

The Prince agreed, and they searched the house
from top to bottom, but found no one. Then,
having locked the front door and the french window
of the sitting-room, they proceeded again to the
cellar.

Here a new obstacle confronted them. The
cellar door was, of course, locked; there was no
sign of a key, and it appeared to be a heavy door.
They were compelled to return to the bedroom where
Miss Spencer was incarcerated, in order to demand
the key of the cellar from her. She still lay
without movement on the bed.

'Tom's got it,' she replied, faintly, to their
question: 'Tom's got it, I swear to you. He took
it for safety.'

'Then how do you feed your prisoner?' Racksole
asked sharply.

'Through the grating,' she answered.

Both men shuddered. They felt she was speaking
the truth. For the third time they went to the
cellar door. In vain Racksole thrust himself
against it; he could do no more than shake it.

'Let's try both together,' said Prince Aribert.
'Now!' There was a crack. 'Again,' said Prince
Aribert. There was another crack, and then the
upper hinge gave way. The rest was easy. Over
the wreck of the door they entered Prince Eugen's
prison.

The captive still sat on his chair. The
terrific noise and bustle of breaking down the
door seemed not to have aroused him from his
lethargy, but when Prince Aribert spoke to him in
German he looked at his uncle.

'Will you not come with us, Eugen?' said Prince
Aribert; 'you needn't stay here any longer, you
know.'

'Leave me alone,' was the strange reply; 'leave
me alone. What do you want?'

'We are here to get you out of this scrape,'
said Aribert gently. Racksole stood aside.

'Who is that fellow?' said Eugen sharply.

'That is my friend Mr Racksole, an Englishman -
or rather, I should say, an American - to whom we
owe a great deal. Come and have supper, Eugen.'

'She! Why, you know! I forgot, of course, you
don't know. You mustn't ask. Don't pry, Uncle
Aribert. She was wearing a red hat.'

'I'll take you to her, my dear Eugen.' Prince
Aribert put his hands on the other's shoulder, but
Eugen shook him off violently, stood up, and then
sat down again.

Aribert looked at Racksole, and they both
looked at Prince Eugen. The latter's face was
flushed, and Racksole observed that the left pupil
was more dilated than the right. The man started,
muttered odd, fragmentary scraps of sentences, now
grumbling, now whining.

'His mind is unhinged,' Racksole whispered in
English.

'Hush!' said Prince Aribert. 'He understands
English.' But Prince Eugen took no notice of the
brief colloquy.

'We had better get him upstairs, somehow,' said
Racksole.

'Yes,' Aribert assented. 'Eugen, the lady with
the red hat, the lady you are waiting for, is
upstairs. She has sent us down to ask you to come
up. Won't you come?'

'Himmel!' the poor fellow exclaimed, with a
kind of weak anger. 'Why did you not say this
before?'

He rose, staggered towards Aribert, and fell
headlong on the floor. He had swooned. The two
men raised him, carried him up the stone steps,
and laid him with infinite care on a sofa. He
lay, breathing queerly through the nostrils, his
eyes closed, his fingers contracted; every now and
then a convulsion ran through his frame.

'One of us must fetch a doctor,' said Prince
Aribert.

'I will,' said Racksole. At that moment there
was a quick, curt rap on the french window, and
both Racksole and the Prince glanced round
startled. A girl's face was pressed against the
large window-pane. It was Nella's. Racksole
unfastened the catch, and she entered.

'I have found you,' she said lightly; 'you
might have told me. I couldn't sleep. I inquired
from the hotel-folks if you had retired, and they
said no; so I slipped out. I guessed where you
were.' Racksole interrupted her with a question as
to what she meant by this escapade, but she
stopped him with a careless gesture. What's
this?' She pointed to the form on the sofa.

'That is my nephew, Prince Eugen,' said
Aribert.

'Hurt?' she inquired coldly. 'I hope not.'

'He is ill,' said Racksole, 'his brain is
turned.'

Nella began to examine the unconscious Prince
with the expert movements of a girl who had passed
through the best hospital course to be obtained in
New York.

'He has got brain fever,' she said. 'That is
all, but it will be enough. Do you know if there
is a bed anywhere in this remarkable house?'

Chapter Eighteen

IN THE NIGHT-TIME

'HE must on no account be moved,'
said the dark little Belgian doctor, whose eyes
seemed to peer so quizzically through his
spectacles; and he said it with much positiveness.

That pronouncement rather settled their plans
for them. It was certainly a professional triumph
for Nella, who, previous to the doctor's arrival,
had told them the very same thing. Considerable
argument had passed before the doctor was sent
for. Prince Aribert was for keeping the whole
affair a deep secret among their three selves.
Theodore Racksole agreed so far, but he suggested
further that at no matter what risk they should
transport the patient over to England at once.
Racksole had an idea that he should feel safer in
that hotel of his, and better able to deal with
any situation that might arise. Nella scorned the
idea. In her quality of an amateur nurse, she
assured them that Prince Eugen was much more
seriously ill than either of them suspected, and
she urged that they should take absolute
possession of the house, and keep possession till
Prince Eugen was convalescent.

'But what about the Spencer female?' Racksole
had said.

'Keep her where she is. Keep her a prisoner.
And hold the house against all comers. If Jules
should come back, simply defy him to enter - that
is all. There are two of you, so you must keep an
eye on the former occupiers, if they return, and
on Miss Spencer, while I nurse the patient. But
first, you must send for a doctor.'

'Doctor!' Prince Aribert had said, alarmed.
'Will it not be necessary to make some awkward
explanation to the doctor?'

'Not at all!' she replied. 'Why should it be?
In a place like Ostend doctors are far too
discreet to ask questions; they see too much to
retain their curiosity. Besides, do you want your
nephew to die?'

Both the men were somewhat taken aback by the
girl's sagacious grasp of the situation, and it
came about that they began to obey her like
subordinates. She told her father to sally forth
in search of a doctor, and he went. She gave
Prince Aribert certain other orders, and he
promptly executed them.

By the evening of the following day, everything
was going smoothly. The doctor came and departed
several times, and sent medicine, and seemed
fairly optimistic as to the issue of the illness.
An old woman had been induced to come in and cook
and clean. Miss Spencer was kept out of sight on
the attic floor, pending some decision as to what
to do with her. And no one outside the house had
asked any questions. The inhabitants of that
particular street must have been accustomed to
strange behaviour on the part of their neighbours,
unaccountable appearances and disappearances,
strange flittings and arrivals. This
strong-minded and active trio - Racksole, Nella,
and Prince Aribert - might have been the lawful
and accustomed tenants of the house, for any
outward evidence to the contrary.

On the afternoon of the third day Prince Eugen
was distinctly and seriously worse. Nella had sat
up with him the previous night and throughout the
day. Her father had spent the morning at the
hotel, and Prince Aribert had kept watch. The two
men were never absent from the house at the same
time, and one of them always did duty as sentinel
at night. On this afternoon Prince Aribert and
Nella sat together in the patient's bedroom. The
doctor had just left. Theodore Racksole was
downstairs reading the New York
Herald. The Prince and Nella were near the
window, which looked on to the back-garden. It
was a queer shabby little bedroom to shelter the
august body of a European personage like Prince
Eugen of Posen. Curiously enough, both Nella and
her father, ardent democrats though they were, had
been somehow impressed by the royalty and
importance of the fever-stricken Prince -
impressed as they had never been by Aribert. They
had both felt that here, under their care, was a
species of individuality quite new to them, and
different from anything they had previously
encountered. Even the gestures and tones of his
delirium had an air of abrupt yet condescending
command - an imposing mixture of suavity and
haughtiness. As for Nella, she had been first
struck by the beautiful 'E' over a crown on the
sleeves of his linen, and by the signet ring on
his pale, emaciated hand. After all, these
trifling outward signs are at least as effective
as others of deeper but less obtrusive
significance. The Racksoles, too, duly marked the
attitude of Prince Aribert to his nephew: it was
at once paternal and reverential; it disclosed
clearly that Prince Aribert continued, in spite of
everything, to regard his nephew as his sovereign
lord and master, as a being surrounded by a
natural and inevitable pomp and awe. This
attitude, at the beginning, seemed false and
unreal to the Americans; it seemed to them to be
assumed; but gradually they came to perceive that
they were mistaken, and that though America might
have cast out 'the monarchial superstition',
nevertheless that 'superstition' had vigorously
survived in another part of the world.

'You and Mr Racksole have been extraordinarily
kind to me,' said Prince Aribert very quietly,
after the two had sat some time in silence.

'Why? How?' she asked unaffectedly. 'We are
interested in this affair ourselves, you know. It
began at our hotel - you mustn't forget that,
Prince.'

'I don't,' he said. 'I forget nothing. But I
cannot help feeling that I have led you into a
strange entanglement. Why should you and Mr
Racksole be here - you who are supposed to be on a
holiday! - hiding in a strange house in a foreign
country, subject to all sorts of annoyances and
all sorts of risks, simply because I am anxious to
avoid scandal, to avoid any sort of talk, in
connection with my misguided nephew? It is
nothing to you that the Hereditary Prince of Posen
should be liable to a public disgrace. What will
it matter to you if the throne of Posen becomes
the laughing-stock of Europe?'

'I really don't know, Prince,' Nella smiled
roguishly. 'But we Americans have, a habit of
going right through with anything we have begun.'

'Ah!' he said, 'who knows how this thing will
end? All our trouble, our anxieties, our
watchfulness, may come to nothing. I tell you
that when I see Eugen lying there, and think that
we cannot learn his story until he recovers, I am
ready to go mad. We might be arranging things,
making matters smooth, preparing for the future,
if only we knew - knew what he can tell us. I
tell you that I am ready to go mad. If anything
should happen to you, Miss Racksole, I would kill
myself.'

'But why?' she questioned. 'Supposing, that
is, that anything could happen to me - which it
can't.'

'Because I have dragged you into this,' he
replied, gazing at her. 'It is nothing to you.
You are only being kind.'

'How do you know it is nothing to me, Prince?'
she asked him quickly.

Just then the sick man made a convulsive
movement, and Nella flew to the bed and soothed
him. From the head of the bed she looked over at
Prince Aribert, and he returned her bright,
excited glance. She was in her travelling-frock,
with a large white Belgian apron tied over it.
Large dark circles of fatigue and sleeplessness
surrounded her eyes, and to the Prince her cheek
seemed hollow and thin; her hair lay thick over
the temples, half covering the ears. Aribert gave
no answer to her query - merely gazed at her with
melancholy intensity.

'I think I will go and rest,' she said at last.
'You will know all about the medicine.'

'Sleep well,' he said, as he softly opened the
door for her. And then he was alone with Eugen.
It was his turn that night to watch, for they
still half-expected some strange, sudden visit, or
onslaught, or move of one kind or another from
Jules. Racksole slept in the parlour on the
ground floor. Nella had the front bedroom on the
first floor; Miss Spencer was immured in the
attic; the last-named lady had been singularly
quiet and incurious, taking her food from Nella
and asking no questions, the old woman went at
nights to her own abode in the purlieus of the
harbour. Hour after hour Aribert sat silent by
his nephew's bed-side, attending mechanically to
his wants, and every now and then gazing hard into
the vacant, anguished face, as if trying to extort
from that mask the secrets which it held. Aribert
was tortured by the idea that if he could have
only half an hour's, only a quarter of an hour's,
rational speech with Prince Eugen, all might be
cleared up and put right, and by the fact that
that rational talk was absolutely impossible on
Eugen's part until the fever had run its course.
As the minutes crept on to midnight the watcher,
made nervous by the intense, electrical atmosphere
which seems always to surround a person who is
dangerously ill, grew more and more a prey to
vague and terrible apprehensions. His mind dwelt
hysterically on the most fatal possibilities. He
wondered what would occur if by any ill-chance
Eugen should die in that bed - how he would
explain the affair to Posen and to the Emperor,
how he would justify himself. He saw himself
being tried for murder, sentenced (him - a Prince
of the blood!), led to the scaffold . . . a
scene unparalleled in Europe for over a century!
. . . Then he gazed anew at the sick man, and
thought he saw death in every drawn feature of
that agonized face. He could have screamed aloud.
His ears heard a peculiar resonant boom. He
started - it was nothing but the city clock
striking twelve. But there was another sound - a
mysterious shuffle at the door. He listened; then
jumped from his chair. Nothing now! Nothing!
But still he felt drawn to the door, and after
what seemed an interminable interval he went and
opened it, his heart beating furiously. Nella lay
in a heap on the door mat. She was fully dressed,
but had apparently lost consciousness. He
clutched at her slender body, picked her up,
carried her to the chair by the fire-place, and
laid her in it. He had forgotten all about Eugen.

'What is it, my angel?' he whispered, and then
he kissed her - kissed her twice. He could only
look at her; he did not know what to do to succour
her.

At last she opened her eyes and sighed.

'Where am I?' she asked. vaguely, in a
tremulous tone. as she recognized him. 'Is it
you? Did I do anything silly? Did I faint?'

'What has happened? Were you ill?' he
questioned anxiously. He was kneeling at her
feet, holding her hand tight.

'I saw Jules by the side of my bed,' she
murmured; 'I'm sure I saw him; he laughed at me.
I had not undressed. I sprang up, frightened, but
he had gone, and then I ran downstairs - to you.'

'You were dreaming,' he soothed her.

'Was I?'

'You must have been. I have not heard a sound.
No one could have entered. But if you like I will
wake Mr Racksole.'

'Perhaps I was dreaming,' she admitted. 'How
foolish!'

'You were over-tired,' he said, still
unconsciously holding her hand. They gazed at
each other. She smiled at him.

'You kissed me,' she said suddenly, and he
blushed red and stood up before her. 'Why did you
kiss me?'

'Ah! Miss Racksole,' he murmured, hurrying the
words out. 'Forgive me. It is unforgivable, but
forgive me. I was overpowered by my feelings. I
did not know what I was doing.'

'Why did you kiss me?' she repeated.

'Because - Nella! I love you. I have no right
to say it.'

'Why have you no right to say it?'

'If Eugen dies, I shall owe a duty to Posen - I
shall be its ruler.'

'Well!' she said calmly, with an adorable
confidence. 'Papa is worth forty millions. Would
you not abdicate?'

'Ah!' he gave a low cry. 'Will you force me to
say these things? I could not shirk my duty to
Posen, and the reigning Prince of Posen can only
marry a Princess.'

'But Prince Eugen will live,' she said
positively, 'and if he lives - '

'Then I shall be free. I would renounce all my
rights to make you mine, if - if - '

'If what, Prince?'

'If you would deign to accept my hand.'

'Am I, then, rich enough?'

'Nella!' He bent down to her.

Then there was a crash of breaking glass.
Aribert went to the window and opened it. In the
starlit gloom he could see that a ladder had been
raised against the back of the house. He thought
he heard footsteps at the end of the garden.

'It was Jules,' he exclaimed to Nella, and
without another word rushed upstairs to the attic.
The attic was empty. Miss Spencer had
mysteriously vanished.

Chapter Nineteen

ROYALTY AT THE GRAND BABYLON

THE Royal apartments at the Grand
Babylon are famous in the world of hotels, and
indeed elsewhere, as being, in their own way,
unsurpassed. Some of the palaces of Germany, and
in particular those of the mad Ludwig of Bavaria,
may possess rooms and saloons which outshine them
in gorgeous luxury and the mere wild fairy-like
extravagance of wealth; but there is nothing,
anywhere, even on Eighth Avenue, New York, which
can fairly be called more complete, more perfect,
more enticing, or - not least important - more
comfortable. The suite consists of six chambers -
the ante-room, the saloon or audience chamber, the
dining-room, the yellow drawing-room (where
Royalty receives its friends), the library, and
the State bedroom - to the last of which we have
already been introduced. The most important and
most impressive of these is, of course, the
audience chamber, an apartment fifty feet long by
forty feet broad, with a superb outlook over the
Thames, the Shot Tower, and the higher signals of
the South-Western Railway. The decoration of this
room is mainly in the German taste, since four out
of every six of its Royal occupants are of
Teutonic blood; but its chief glory is its French
ceiling, a masterpiece by Fragonard, taken bodily
from a certain famous palace on the Loire. The
walls are of panelled oak, with an eight-foot dado
of Arras cloth imitated from unique Continental
examples. The carpet, woven in one piece, is an
antique specimen of the finest Turkish work, and
it was obtained, a bargain, by Félix
Babylon, from an impecunious Roumanian Prince.
The silver candelabra, now fitted with electric
light, came from the Rhine, and each had a
separate history. The Royal chair - it is not
etiquette to call it a throne, though it amounts
to a throne - was looted by Napoleon from an
Austrian city, and bought by Félix Babylon
at the sale of a French collector. At each corner
of the room stands a gigantic grotesque vase of
German faïence of the sixteenth century.
These were presented to Félix Babylon by
William the First of Germany, upon the conclusion
of his first incognito visit to London in
connection with the French trouble of 1875. There
is only one picture in the audience chamber. It
is a portrait of the luckless but noble Dom Pedro,
Emperor of the Brazils. Given to Félix
Babylon by Dom Pedro himself, it hangs there
solitary and sublime as a reminder to Kings and
Princes that Empires may pass away and greatness
fall. A certain Prince who was occupying the
suite during the Jubilee of 1887 - when the Grand
Babylon had seven persons of Royal blood under its
roof - sent a curt message to Félix that
the portrait must be removed. Félix
respectfully declined to remove it, and the Prince
left for another hotel, where he was robbed of two
thousand pounds' worth of jewellery. The Royal
audience chamber of the Grand Babylon, if people
only knew it, is one of the sights of London, but
it is never shown, and if you ask the hotel
servants about its wonders they will tell you only
foolish facts concerning it, as that the Turkey
carpet costs fifty pounds to clean, and that one
of the great vases is cracked across the pedestal,
owing to the rough treatment accorded to it during
a riotous game of Blind Man's Buff, played one
night by four young Princesses, a Balkan King, and
his aides-de-camp.

In one of the window recesses of this
magnificent apartment, on a certain afternoon in
late July, stood Prince Aribert of Posen. He was
faultlessly dressed in the conventional frock-coat
of English civilization, with a gardenia in his
button-hole, and the indispensable crease down the
front of the trousers. He seemed to be fairly
amused, and also to expect someone, for at
frequent intervals he looked rapidly over his
shoulder in the direction of the door behind the
Royal chair. At last a little wizened, stooping
old man, with a distinctly German cast of
countenance, appeared through the door, and laid
some papers on a small table by the side of the
chair.

'Ah, Hans, my old friend!' said Aribert,
approaching the old man. 'I must have a little
talk with you about one or two matters. How do
you find His Royal Highness?'

The old man saluted, military fashion. 'Not
very well, your Highness,' he answered. 'I've
been valet to your Highness's nephew since his
majority, and I was valet to his Royal father
before him, but I never saw - ' He stopped, and
threw up his wrinkled hands deprecatingly.

'You never saw what?' Aribert smiled
affectionately on the old fellow. You could
perceive that these two, so sharply differentiated
in rank, had been intimate in the past, and would
be intimate again.

'Do you know, my Prince,' said the old man,
'that we are to receive the financier, Sampson
Levi - is that his name? - in the audience
chamber? Surely, if I may humbly suggest, the
library would have been good enough for a
financier?'

'One would have thought so,' agreed Prince
Aribert, 'but perhaps your master has a special
reason. Tell me,' he went on, changing the
subject quickly, 'how came it that you left the
Prince, my nephew, at Ostend, and returned to
Posen?'

'His orders, Prince,' and old Hans, who had had
a wide experience of Royal whims and knew half the
secrets of the Courts of Europe, gave Aribert a
look which might have meant anything. 'He sent me
back on an - an errand, your Highness.'

'And you were to rejoin him here?'

'Just so, Highness. And I did rejoin him here,
although, to tell the truth, I had begun to fear
that I might never see my master again.'

'The Prince has been very ill in Ostend, Hans.'

'So I have gathered,' Hans responded drily,
slowly rubbing his hands together. 'And his
Highness is not yet perfectly recovered.'

'Not yet. We despaired of his life, Hans, at
one time, but thanks to an excellent constitution,
he came safely through the ordeal.'

'We must take care of him, your Highness.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Aribert solemnly, 'his life
is very precious to Posen.'

At that moment, Eugen, Hereditary Prince of
Posen, entered the audience chamber. He was pale
and languid, and his uniform seemed to be a
trouble to him. His hair had been slightly
ruffled, and there was a look of uneasiness,
almost of alarmed unrest, in his fine dark eyes.
He was like a man who is afraid to look behind him
lest he should see something there which ought not
to be there. But at the same time, here beyond
doubt was Royalty. Nothing could have been more
striking than the contrast between Eugen, a sick
man in the shabby house at Ostend, and this Prince
Eugen in the Royal apartments of the Grand Babylon
Hotel, surrounded by the luxury and pomp which
modern civilization can offer to those born in
high places. All the desperate episode of Ostend
was now hidden, passed over. It was supposed
never to have occurred. It existed only like a
secret shame in the hearts of those who had
witnessed it. Prince Eugen had recovered; at any
rate, he was convalescent, and he had been removed
to London, where he took up again the dropped
thread of his princely life. The lady with the
red hat, the incorruptible and savage Miss
Spencer, the unscrupulous and brilliant Jules, the
dark, damp cellar, the horrible little bedroom -
these things were over. Thanks to Prince Aribert
and the Racksoles, he had emerged from them in
safety. He was able to resume his public and
official career. The Emperor had been informed of
his safe arrival in London, after an unavoidable
delay in Ostend; his name once more figured in the
Court chronicle of the newspapers. In short,
everything was smothered over. Only - only Jules,
Rocco, and Miss Spencer were still at large; and
the body of Reginald Dimmock lay buried in the
domestic mausoleum of the palace at Posen; and
Prince Eugen had still to interview Mr Sampson
Levi.

That various matters lay heavy on the mind of
Prince Eugen was beyond question. He seemed to
have withdrawn within himself. Despite the
extraordinary experiences through which he had
recently passed, events which called aloud for
explanations and confidence between the nephew and
the uncle, he would say scarcely a word to Prince
Aribert. Any allusion, however direct, to the
days at Ostend, was ignored by him with more or
less ingenuity, and Prince Aribert was really no
nearer a full solution of the mystery of Jules'
plot than he had been on the night when he and
Racksole visited the gaming tables at Ostend.
Eugen was well aware that he had been kidnapped
through the agency of the woman in the red hat,
but, doubtless ashamed at having been her dupe, he
would not proceed in any way with the clearing-up
of the matter.

'You will receive in this room, Eugen?' Aribert
questioned him.

'Yes,' was the answer, given pettishly. 'Why
not? Even if I have no proper retinue here,
surely that is no reason why I should not hold
audience in a proper manner? . .
. Hans, you can go.' The old valet promptly
disappeared. 'Aribert,' the Hereditary Prince
continued, when they were alone in the chamber,
'you think I am mad.'

'I say you think I am mad. You think that that
attack of brain fever has left its permanent mark
on me. Well, perhaps I am mad. Who can tell?
God knows that I have been through enough lately
to drive me mad.'

Aribert made no reply. As a matter of strict
fact, the thought had crossed his mind that
Eugen's brain had not yet recovered its normal
tone and activity. This speech of his nephew's,
however, had the effect of immediately restoring
his belief in the latter's entire sanity. He felt
convinced that if only he could regain his
nephew's confidence, the old brotherly confidence
which had existed between them since the years
when they played together as boys, all might yet
be well. But at present there appeared to be no
sign that Eugen meant to give his confidence to
anyone. The young Prince had come up out of the
valley of the shadow of death, but some of the
valley's shadow had clung to him, and it seemed he
was unable to dissipate it.

'By the way,' said Eugen suddenly, 'I must
reward these Racksoles, I suppose. I am indeed
grateful to them. If I gave the girl a bracelet,
and the father a thousand guineas - how would that
meet the case?'

'My dear Eugen!' exclaimed Aribert aghast. 'A
thousand guineas! Do you know that Theodore
Racksole could buy up all Posen from end to end
without making himself a pauper. A thousand
guineas! You might as well offer him sixpence.'

'Then what must I offer?'

'Nothing, except your thanks. Anything else
would be an insult. These are no ordinary hotel
people.'

'Can't I give the little girl a bracelet?'
Prince Eugen gave a sinister laugh.

Aribert looked at him steadily. 'No,' he said.

'Why did you kiss her - that night?' asked
Prince Eugen carelessly.

'Kiss whom?' said Aribert, blushing and angry,
despite his most determined efforts to keep calm
and unconcerned.

'The Racksole girl.'

'When do you mean?'

'I mean,' said Prince Eugen, 'that night in
Ostend when I was ill. You thought I was in a
delirium. Perhaps I was. But somehow I remember
that with extraordinary distinctness. I remember
raising my head for a fraction of an instant, and
just in that fraction of an instant you kissed
her. Oh, Uncle Aribert!'

'The Emperor has nothing to do with the affair.
I shall renounce my rights. I shall become a
plain citizen.'

'In which case you will have no fortune to
speak of.'

'But my wife will have a fortune. Knowing the
sacrifices which I shall have made in order to
marry her, she will not hesitate to place that
fortune in my hands for our mutual use,' said
Aribert stiffly.

'You will decidedly be rich,' mused Eugen, as
his ideas dwelt on Theodore Racksole's reputed
wealth. 'But have you thought of this,' he asked,
and his mild eyes glowed again in a sort of
madness. 'Have you thought that I am unmarried,
and might die at any moment, and then the throne
will descend to you - to you, Aribert?'

'The throne will never descend to me, Eugen,'
said Aribert softly, 'for you will live. You are
thoroughly convalescent. You have nothing to
fear.'

'It is the next seven days that I fear,' said
Eugen.

'The next seven days! Why?'

'I do not know. But I fear them. If I can
survive them - '

'Mr Sampson Levi, sire,' Hans announced in a
loud tone.

Chapter Twenty

MR SAMPSON LEVI BIDS PRINCE EUGEN GOOD
MORNING

PRINCE EUGEN started. 'I will see
him,' he said, with a gesture to Hans as if to
indicate that Mr Sampson Levi might enter at once.

'I beg one moment first,' said Aribert, laying
a hand gently on his nephew's arm, and giving old
Hans a glance which had the effect of
precipitating that admirably trained servant
through the doorway.

'What is it?' asked Prince Eugen crossly. 'Why
this sudden seriousness? Don't forget that I have
an appointment with Mr
Sampson Levi, and must not keep him waiting.
Someone said that punctuality is the politeness
of princes.'

'Eugen,' said Aribert, 'I wish you to be as
serious as I am. Why cannot we have faith in each
other? I want to help you. I have helped you.
You are my titular Sovereign; but on the other
hand I have the honour to be your uncle: I have
the honour to be the same age as you, and to have
been your companion from youth up. Give me your
confidence. I thought you had given it me years
ago, but I have lately discovered that you had
your secrets, even then. And now, since your
illness, you are still more secretive.'

'What do you mean, Aribert?' said Eugen, in a
tone which might have been either inimical or
friendly. 'What do you want to say?'

'Well, in the first place, I want to say that
you will not succeed with the estimable Mr Sampson
Levi.'

'Shall I not?' said Eugen lightly. 'How do you
know what my business is with him?'

'Suffice it to say that I know. You will never
get that million pounds out of him.'

Prince Eugen gasped, and then swallowed his
excitement. 'Who has been talking? What
million?' His eyes wandered uneasily round the
room. 'Ah!' he said, pretending to laugh. 'I see
how it is. I have been chattering in my delirium.
You mustn't take any notice of that, Aribert.
When one has a fever one's ideas become grotesque
and fanciful.'

'You never talked in your delirium,' Aribert
replied; 'at least not about yourself. I knew
about this projected loan before I saw you in
Ostend.'

'Who told you?' demanded Eugen fiercely.

'Then you admit that you are trying to raise a
loan?'

'I admit nothing. Who told you?'

'Theodore Racksole, the millionaire. These
rich men have no secrets from each other. They
form a coterie, closer than any coterie of ours.
Eugen, and far more powerful. They talk, and in
talking they rule the world, these millionaires.
They are the real monarchs.'

'Curse them!' said Eugen.

'Yes, perhaps so. But let me return to your
case. Imagine my shame, my disgust, when I found
that Racksole could tell me more about your
affairs than I knew myself. Happily, he is a good
fellow; one can trust him; otherwise I should have
been tempted to do something desperate when I
discovered that all your private history was in
his hands. Eugen, let us come to the point; why
do you want that million? Is it actually true
that you are so deeply in debt? I have no desire
to improve the occasion. I merely ask.'

'And what if I do owe a million?' said Prince
Eugen with assumed valour.

'Oh, nothing, my dear Eugen, nothing. Only it
is rather a large sum to have scattered in ten
years, is it not? How did you manage it?'

'Don't ask me, Aribert. I've been a fool. But
I swear to you that the woman whom you call "the
lady in the red hat" is the last of my follies. I
am about to take a wife, and become a respectable
Prince.'

'Then the engagement with Princess Anna is an
accomplished fact?'

'Practically so. As soon as I have settled
with Levi, all will be smooth. Aribert, I
wouldn't lose Anna for the Imperial throne. She
is a good and pure woman, and I love her as a man
might love an angel.'

'And yet you would deceive her as to your
debts, Eugen?'

'Not her, but her absurd parents, and perhaps
the Emperor. They have heard rumours, and I must
set those rumours at rest by presenting to them a
clean sheet.'

'I am glad you have been frank with me, Eugen,'
said Prince Aribert, 'but I will be plain with
you. You will never marry the Princess Anna.'

'And why?' said Eugen, supercilious again.

'Because her parents will not permit it.
Because you will not be able to present a clean
sheet to them. Because this Sampson Levi will
never lend you a million.'

'Explain yourself.'

'I propose to do so. You were kidnapped - it
is a horrid word, but we must use it - in Ostend.'

'True.'

'Do you know why?'

'I suppose because that vile old red-hatted
woman and her accomplices wanted to get some money
out of me. Fortunately, thanks to you, they
didn't.'

'Not at all,' said Aribert. 'They wanted no
money from you. They knew well enough that you
had no money. They knew you were the naughty
schoolboy among European Princes, with no sense of
responsibility or of duty towards your kingdom.
Shall I tell you why they kidnapped you?'

'When you have done abusing me, my dear uncle.'

'They kidnapped you merely to keep you out of
England for a few days, merely to compel you to
fail in your appointment with Sampson Levi. And
it appears to me that they succeeded. Assuming
that you don't obtain the money from Levi, is
there another financier in all Europe from whom
you can get it - on such strange security as you
have to offer?'

'Possibly there is not,' said Prince Eugen
calmly. 'But, you see, I shall get it from
Sampson Levi. Levi promised it, and I know from
other sources that he is a man of his word. He
said that the money, subject to certain
formalities, would be available till - '

'Till?'

'Till the end of June.'

'And it is now the end of July.'

'Well, what is a month? He is only too glad to
lend the money. He will get excellent interest.
How on earth have you got into your sage old head
this notion of a plot against me? The idea is
ridiculous. A plot against me? What for?'

'Have you ever thought of Bosnia?' asked
Aribert coldly.

'What of Bosnia?'

'I need not tell you that the King of Bosnia is
naturally under obligations to Austria, to whom he
owes his crown. Austria is anxious for him to
make a good influential marriage.'

'Well, let him.'

'He is going to. He is going to marry the
Princess Anna.'

'Not while I live. He made overtures there a
year ago, and was rebuffed.'

'Yes; but he will make overtures again, and
this time he will not be rebuffed. Oh, Eugen!
can't you see that this plot against you is being
engineered by some persons who know all about your
affairs, and whose desire is to prevent your
marriage with Princess Anna? Only one man in
Europe can have any motive for wishing to prevent
your marriage with Princess Anna, and that is the
man who means to marry her himself.' Eugen went
very pale.

'Then, Aribert, do you mean to oonvey to me
that my detention in Ostend was contrived by the
agents of the King of Bosnia?'

'I do.'

'With a view to stopping my negotiations with
Sampson Levi, and so putting an end to the
possibility of my marriage with Anna?'

Aribert nodded.

'You are a good friend to me, Aribert. You
mean well. But you are mistaken. You have been
worrying about nothing.'

'Have you forgotten about Reginald Dimmock?'

'I remember you said that he had died.'

'I said nothing of the sort. I said that he
had been assassinated. That was part of it, my
poor Eugen.'

'Pooh!' said Eugen. 'I don't believe he was
assassinated. And as for Sampson Levi, I will bet
you a thousand marks that he and I come to terms
this morning, and that the million is in my hands
before I leave London.' Aribert shook his head.

'You seem to be pretty sure of Mr Levi's
character. Have you had much to do with him
before?'

'Well,' Eugen hesitated a second, 'a little.
What young man in my position hasn't had something
to do with Mr Sampson Levi at one time or
another?'

'I haven't,' said Aribert.

'You! You are a fossil.' He rang a silver
bell. 'Hans! I will receive Mr Sampson Levi.'

Whereupon Aribert discreetly departed, and
Prince Eugen sat down in the great velvet chair,
and began to look at the papers which Hans had
previously placed upon the table.

'Good morning, your Royal Highness,' said
Sampson Levi, bowing as he entered. 'I trust your
Royal Highness is well.'

'Moderately, thanks,' returned the Prince.

In spite of the fact that he had had as much to
do with people of Royal blood as any plain man in
Europe, Sampson Levi had never yet learned how to
be at ease with these exalted individuals during
the first few minutes of an interview.
Afterwards, he resumed command of himself and his
faculties, but at the beginning he was invariably
flustered, scarlet of face, and inclined to
perspiration.

'We will proceed to business at once,' said
Prince Eugen. 'Will you take a seat, Mr Levi?'

'I thank your Royal Highness.'

'Now as to that loan which we had already
practically arranged
- a million, I think it was,' said the Prince
airily.

'A million,' Levi acquiesced, toying with his
enormous watch chain.

'Everything is now in order. Here are the
papers and I should like to finish the matter up
at once.'

'Exactly, your Highness, but - '

'But what? You months ago expressed the
warmest satisfaction at the security, though I am
quite prepared to admit that the security, is of
rather an unusual nature. You also agreed to the
rate of interest. It is not everyone, Mr Levi,
who can lend out a million at 5-1/2 per cent. And
in ten years the whole amount will be paid back.
I - er - I believe I informed you that the fortune
of Princess Anna, who is about to accept my hand,
will ultimately amount to something like fifty
millions of marks, which is over two million
pounds in your English money.' Prince Eugen
stopped. He had no fancy for talking in this
confidential manner to financiers, but he felt
that circumstances demanded it.

'You see, it's like this, your Royal Highness,'
began Mr Sampson Levi, in his homely English
idiom. 'It's like this. I said I could keep that
bit of money available till the end of June, and
you were to give me an interview here before that
date. Not having heard from your Highness, and
not knowing your Highness's address, though my
German agents made every inquiry, I concluded,
that you had made other arrangements, money being
so cheap this last few months.'

'I was unfortunately detained at Ostend,' said
Prince Eugen, with as much haughtiness as he could
assume, 'by - by important business. I have made
no other arangements, and I shall have need of the
million. If you will be so good as to pay it to
my London bankers - '

'I'm very sorry,' said Mr Sampson Levi, with a
tremendous and dazzling air of politeness, which
surprised even himself, 'but my syndicate has now
lent the money elsewhere. It's in South America -
I don't mind telling your Highness that we've lent
it to the Chilean Government.'

'Hang the Chilean Government, Mr Levi,'
exclaimed the Prince, and he went white. 'I must
have that million. It was an arrangement.'

'It was an arrangement, I admit,' said Mr
Sampson Levi, 'but your Highness broke the
arrangement.'

There was a long silence.

'Do you mean to say,' began the Prince with
tense calmness, 'that you are not in a position to
let me have that million?'

'I could let your Highness have a million in a
couple of years' time.'

The Prince made a gesture of annoyance. 'Mr
Levi,' he said, 'if you do not place the money in
my hands to-morrow you will ruin one of the oldest
of reigning families, and, incidentally, you will
alter the map of Europe. You are not keeping
faith, and I had relied on you.'

'Pardon me, your Highness,' said little Levi,
rising in resentment, 'it is not I who have not
kept faith. I beg to repeat that the money is no
longer at my disposal, and to bid your Highness
good morning.'

And Mr Sampson Levi left the audience chamber
with an awkward, aggrieved bow. It was a scene
characteristic of the end of the nineteenth
century - an overfed, commonplace, pursy little
man who had been born in a Brixton semi-detached
villa, and whose highest idea of pleasure was a
Sunday up the river in an expensive electric
launch, confronting and utterly routing, in a
hotel belonging to an American millionaire, the
representative of a race of men who had fingered
every page of European history for centuries, and
who still, in their native castles, were
surrounded with every outward circumstance of pomp
and power.

'Aribert,' said Prince Eugen, a little later,
'you were right. It is all over. I have only one
refuge - '

'You don't mean - ' Aribert stopped,
dumbfounded.

'Yes, I do,' he said quickly. 'I can manage it
so that it will look like an accident.'

Chapter Twenty-One

THE RETURN OF FÉLIX BABYLON

ON the evening of Prince Eugen's
fateful interview with Mr Sampson Levi, Theodore
Racksole was wandering somewhat aimlessly and
uneasily about the entrance hail and adjacent
corridors of the Grand Babylon. He had returned
from Ostend only a day or two previously, and had
endeavoured with all his might to forget the
affair which had carried him there - to regard it,
in fact, as done with. But he found himself
unable to do so. In vain he remarked, under his
breath, that there were some things which were
best left alone: if his experience as a
manipulator of markets, a contriver of gigantic
schemes in New York, had taught him anything at
all, it should surely have taught him that. Yet
he could not feel reconciled to such a position.
The mere presence of the princes in his hotel
roused the fighting instincts of this man, who had
never in his whole career been beaten. He had, as
it were, taken up arms on their side, and if the
princes of Posen would not continue their own
battle, nevertheless he, Theodore Racksole, wanted
to continue it for them. To a certain extent, of
course, the battle had been won, for Prince Eugen
had been rescued from an extremely difficult and
dangerous position, and the enemy - consisting of
Jules, Rocco, Miss Spencer, and perhaps others -
had been put to flight. But that, he conceived,
was not enough; it was very far from being enough.
That the criminals, for criminals they decidedly
were, should still be at large, he regarded as an
absurd anomaly. And there was another point: he
had said nothing to the police of all that had
occurred. He disdained the police, but he could
scarcely fail to perceive that if the police
should by accident gain a clue to the real state
of the case he might be placed rather awkwardly,
for the simple reason that in the eyes of the law
it amounted to a misdemeanour to conceal as much
as he had concealed. He asked himself, for the
thousandth time, why he had adopted a policy of
concealment from the police, why he had become in
any way interested in the Posen matter, and why,
at this present moment, he should be so anxious to
prosecute it further? To the first two questions
he replied, rather lamely, that he had been
influenced by Nella, and also by a natural spirit
of adventure; to the third he replied that he had
always been in the habit of carrying things
through, and was now actuated by a mere childish,
obstinate desire to carry this one through.
Moreover, he was spendidly conscious of his
perfect ability to carry it through. One
additional impulse he had, though he did not admit
it to himself, being by nature adverse to big
words, and that was an abstract love of justice,
the Anglo-Saxon's deep-found instinct for helping
the right side to conquer, even when grave risks
must thereby be run, with no corresponding
advantage.

He was turning these things over in his mind as
he walked about the vast hotel on that evening of
the last day in July. The Society papers had been
stating for a week past that London was empty,
but, in spite of the Society papers, London
persisted in seeming to be just as full as ever.
The Grand Babylon was certainly not as crowded as
it had been a month earlier, but it was doing a
very passable business. At the close of the
season the gay butterflies of the social community
have a habit of hovering for a day or two in the
big hotels before they flutter away to castle and
country-house, meadow and moor, lake and stream.
The great basket-chairs in the portico were well
filled by old and middle-aged gentlemen engaged in
enjoying the varied delights of liqueurs, cigars,
and the full moon which floated so serenely above
the Thames. Here and there a pretty woman on the
arm of a cavalier in immaculate attire swept her
train as she turned to and fro in the promenade of
the terrace. Waiters and uniformed
commissionaires and gold-braided doorkeepers moved
noiselessly about; at short intervals the chief of
the doorkeepers blew his shrill whistle and
hansoms drove up with tinkling bell to take away a
pair of butterflies to some place of amusement or
boredom; occasionally a private carriage drawn by
expensive and self-conscious horses put the
hansoms to shame by its mere outward glory. It
was a hot night, a night for the summer woods, and
save for the vehicles there was no rapid movement
of any kind. It seemed as though the world - the
world, that is to say, of the Grand Babylon - was
fully engaged in the solemn processes of digestion
and small-talk. Even the long row of the
Embankment gas-lamps, stretching right and left,
scarcely trembled in the still, warm, caressing
air. The stars overhead looked down with many
blinkings upon the enormous pile of the Grand
Babylon, and the moon regarded it with bland and
changeless face; what they thought of it and its
inhabitants cannot, unfortunately, be recorded.
What Theodore Racksole thought of the moon can be
recorded: he thought it was a nuisance. It
somehow fascinated his gaze with its silly stare,
and so interfered with his complex meditations.
He glanced round at the well-dressed and satisfied
people - his guests, his customers. They appeared
to ignore him absolutely. Probably only a very
small percentage of them had the least idea that
this tall spare man, with the iron-grey hair and
the thin, firm, resolute face, who wore his
American-cut evening clothes with such careless
ease, was the sole proprietor of the Grand
Babylon, and possibly the richest man in Europe.
As has already been stated, Racksole was not a
celebrity in England. The guests of the Grand
Babylon saw merely a restless male person, whose
restlessness was rather a disturber of their
quietude, but with whom, to judge by his
countenance, it would be inadvisable to
remonstrate. Therefore Theodore Racksole
continued his perambulations unchallenged, and
kept saying to himself, 'I must do something.' But
what? He could think of no course to pursue.

At last he walked straight through the hotel
and out at the other entrance, and so up the
little unassuming side street into the roaring
torrent of the narrow and crowded Strand. He
jumped on a Putney bus, and paid his fair to
Putney, fivepence, and then, finding that the
humble occupants of the vehicle stared at the
spectacle of a man in evening dress but without a
dustcoat, he jumped off again, oblivious of the
fact that the conductor jerked a thumb towards him
and winked at the passengers as who should say,
'There goes a lunatic.' He went into a
tobacconist's shop and asked for a cigar. The
shopman mildly inquired what price.

'What are the best you've got?' asked Theodore
Racksole.

'Five shillings each, sir,' said the man
promptly.

'Give me a penny one,' was Theodore Racksole's
laconic request, and he walked out of the shop
smoking the penny cigar. It was a new sensation
for him.

He was inhaling the aromatic odours of
Eugène Rimmel's establishment for the sale
of scents when a gentleman, walking slowly in the
opposite direction, accosted him with a quiet,
'Good evening, Mr Racksole.' The millionaire did
not at first recognize his interlocutor, who wore
a travelling overcoat, and was carrying a handbag.
Then a slight, pleased smile passed over his
features, and he held out his hand.

'Well, Mr Babylon,' he greeted the other, 'of
all persons in the wide world you are the man I
would most have wished to meet.'

'You flatter me,' said the little Anglicized
Swiss.

'No, I don't,' answered Racksole; 'it isn't my
custom, any more than it's yours. I wanted to
have a real good long yarn with you, and lo! here
you are! Where have you sprung from?'

'From Lausanne,' said Félix Babylon. 'I
had finished my duties there, I had nothing else
to do, and I felt homesick. I felt the nostalgia
of London, and so I came over, just as you see,'
and he raised the handbag for Racksole's notice.
'One toothbrush, one razor, two slippers, ehl' He
laughed. 'I was wondering as I walked along where
I should stay - me, Félix Babylon, homeless
in London.'

'I should advise you to stay at the Grand
Babylon,' Racksole laughed back. 'It is a good
hotel, and I know the proprietor personally.'

'Rather expensive, is it not?' said Babylon.

'To you, sir,' answered Racksole, 'the
inclusive terms will be exactly half a crown a
week. Do you accept?'

'I accept,' said Babylon, and added, 'You are
very good, Mr Racksole.'

They strolled together back to the hotel,
saying nothing in particular, but feeling very
content with each other's company.

'Many customers?' asked Félix Babylon.

'Very tolerable,' said Racksole, assuming as
much of the air of the professional hotel
proprietor as he could. 'I think I may say in the
storekeeper's phrase, that if there is any
business about I am doing it. To-night the people
are all on the terrace in the portico - it's so
confoundedly hot - and the consumption of ice is
simply enormous - nearly as large as it would be
in New York.'

'In that case,' said Babylon politely, 'let me
offer you another cigar.'

'But I have not finished this one.'

'That is just why I wish to offer you another
one. A cigar such as yours, my good friend, ought
never to be smoked within the precincts of the
Grand Babylon, not even by the proprietor of the
Grand Babylon, and especially when all the guests
are assembled in the portico. The fumes of it
would ruin any hotel.'

Theodore Racksole laughingly lighted the
Rothschild Havana which Babylon gave him, and they
entered the hotel arm in arm. But no sooner had
they mounted the steps than little Félix
became the object of numberless greetings. It
appeared that he had been highly popular among his
quondam guests. At last they reached the
managerial room, where Babylon was regaled on a
chicken, and Racksole assisted him in the
consumption of a bottle of Heidsieck Monopole,
Carte d'Or.

'This chicken is almost perfectly grilled,'
said Babylon at length. 'It is a credit to the
house. But why, my dear Racksole, why in the name
of Heaven did you quarrel with Rocco?'

'Then you have heard?'

'Heard! My dear friend, it was in every
newspaper on the Continent. Some journals
prophesied that the Grand Babylon would have to
close its doors within half a year now that Rocco
had deserted it. But of course I knew better. I
knew that you must have a good reason for allowing
Rocco to depart, and that you must have made
arrangements in advance for a substitute.'

'As a matter of fact, I had not made
arrangements in advance,' said Theodore Racksole,
a little ruefully; 'but happily we have found in
our second sous-chef an artist inferior only to
Rocco himself. That, however, was mere good
fortune.'

'Surely,' said Babylon, 'it was indiscreet to
trust to mere good fortune in such a serious
matter?'

'I didn't trust to mere good fortune. I didn't
trust to anything except Rocco, and he deceived
me.'

'But why did you quarrel with him?'

'I didn't quarrel with him. I found him
embalming a corpse in the State bedroom one night
- '

'You what?' Babylon almost screamed.

'I found him embalming a corpse in the State
bedroom,' repeated Racksole in his quietest tones.

The two men gazed at each other, and then
Racksole replenished Babylon's glass.

'Tell me,' said Babylon, settling himself deep
in an easy chair and lighting a cigar.

And Racksole thereupon recounted to him the
whole of the Posen episode, with every
circumstantial detail so far as he knew it. It
was a long and complicated recital, and occupied
about an hour. During that time little
Félix never spoke a word, scarcely moved a
muscle; only his small eyes gazed through the
bluish haze of smoke. The clock on the
mantelpiece tinkled midnight.

'Time for whisky and soda,' said Racksole, and
got up as if to ring the bell; but Babylon waved
him back.

'You have told me that this Sampson Levi had an
audience of Prince Eugen to-day, but you have not
told me the result of that audience,' said
Babylon.

'Because I do not yet know it. But I shall
doubtless know to-morrow. In the meantime, I feel
fairly sure that Levi declined to produce Prince
Eugen's required million. I have reason to
believe that the money was lent elsewhere.'

'H'm!' mused Babylon; and then, carelessly, 'I
am not at all surprised at that arrangement for
spying through the bathroom of the State
apartments.'

'Why are you not surprised?'

'Oh!' said Babylon, 'it is such an obvious
dodge - so easy to carry out. As for me, I took
special care never to involve myself in these
affairs. I knew they existed; I somehow felt that
they existed. But I also felt that they lay
outside my sphere. My business was to provide
board and lodging of the most sumptuous kind to
those who didn't mind paying for it; and I did my
business. If anything else went on in the hotel,
under the rose, I long determined to ignore it
unless it should happen to be brought before my
notice; and it never was brought before my notice.
However, I admit that there is a certain
pleasurable excitement in this kind of affair and
doubtless you have experienced that.'

'I have,' said Racksole simply, 'though I
believe you are laughing at me.'

'By no means,' Babylon replied. 'Now what, if
I may ask the question, is going to be your next
step?'

'That is just what I desire to know myself,'
said Theodore Racksole.

'Well,' said Babylon, after a pause, 'let us
begin. In the first place, it is possible you may
be interested to hear that I happened to see Jules
to-day.'

'You did!' Racksole remarked with much
calmness. 'Where?'

'Well, it was early this morning, in Paris,
just before I left there. The meeting was quite
accidental, and Jules seemed rather surprised at
meeting me. He respectfully inquired where I was
going, and I said that I was going to Switzerland.
At that moment I thought I was going to
Switzerland. It had occurred to me that after all
I should be happier there, and that I had better
turn back and not see London any more. However, I
changed my mind once again, and decided to come on
to London, and accept the risks of being miserable
there without my hotel. Then I asked Jules
whither he was bound, and he told me that he was
off to Constantinople, being interested in a new
French hotel there. I wished him good luck, and
we parted.'

'Constantinople, eh!' said Racksole. 'A highly
suitable place for him, I should say.'

'But,' Babylon resumed, 'I caught sight of him
again.'

'Where?'

'At Charing Cross, a few minutes before I had
the pleasure of meeting you. Mr Jules had not
gone to Constantinople after all. He did not see
me, or I should have suggested to him that in
going from Paris to Constantinople it is not usual
to travel via London.'

'The cheek of the fellow!' exclaimed Theodore
Racksole. 'The gorgeous and colossal cheek of the
fellow!'

Chapter Twenty-Two

IN THE WINE CELLARS OF THE GRAND BABYLON

'DO you know anything of the
antecedents of this Jules,' asked Theodore
Racksole, helping himself to whisky.

'Nothing whatever,' said Babylon. 'Until you
told me, I don't think I was aware that his true
name was Thomas Jackson, though of course I knew
that it was not Jules. I certainly was not aware
that Miss Spencer was his wife, but I had long
suspected that their relations were somewhat more
intimate than the nature of their respective
duties in the hotel absolutely demanded. All that
I do know of Jules - he will always be called
Jules - is that he gradually, by some mysterious
personal force, acquired a prominent position in
the hotel. Decidedly he was the cleverest and
most intellectual waiter I have ever known, and he
was specially skilled in the difficult task of
retaining his own dignity while not interfering
with that of other people. I'm afraid this
information is a little too vague to be of any
practical assistance in the present difficulty.'

'What is the present difficulty?' Racksole
queried, with a simple air.

'I should imagine that the present difficulty
is to account for the man's presence in London.'

'That is easily accounted for,' said Racksole.

'How? Do you suppose he is anxious to give
himself up to justice, or that the chains of habit
bind him to the hotel?'

'Neither,' said Racksole. 'Jules is going to
have another try - that's all.'

'Another try at what?'

'At Prince Eugen. Either at his life or his
liberty. Most probably the former this time;
almost certainly the former. He has guessed that
we are somewhat handicapped by our anxiety to keep
Prince Eugen's predicament quite quiet, and he is
taking advantage, of that fact. As he already is
fairly rich, on his own admission, the reward
which has been offered to him must be enormous,
and he is absolutely determined to get it. He has
several times recently proved himself to be a
daring fellow; unless I am mistaken he will
shortly prove himself to be still more daring.'

'But what can he do? Surely you don't suggest
that he will attempt the life of Prince Eugen in
this hotel?'

'Why not? If Reginald Dimmock fell on mere
suspicion that he would turn out unfaithful to the
conspiracy, why not Prince Eugen?'

'But it would be an unspeakable crime, and do
infinite harm to the hotel!'

'True!' Racksole admitted, smiling. Little
Félix Babylon seemed to brace himself for
the grasping of his monstrous idea.

'How could it possibly be done?' he asked at
length.

'Dimmock was poisoned.'

'Yes, but you had Rocco here then, and Rocco
was in the plot. It is conceivable that Rocco
could have managed it - barely conceivable. But
without Rocco I cannot think it possible. I
cannot even think that Jules would attempt it.
You see, in a place like the Grand Babylon, as
probably I needn't point out to you, food has to
pass through so many hands that to poison one
person without killing perhaps fifty would be a
most delicate operation. Moreover, Prince Eugen,
unless he has changed his habits, is always served
by his own attendant, old Hans, and therefore any
attempt to tamper with a cooked dish immediately
before serving would be hazardous in the extreme.'

'Granted,' said Racksole. 'The wine, however,
might be more easily got at. Had you thought of
that?'

'I had not,' Babylon admitted. 'You are an
ingenious theorist, but I happen to know that
Prince Eugen always has his wine opened in his own
presence. No doubt it would be opened by Hans.
Therefore the wine theory is not tenable, my
friend.'

'I do not see why,' said Racksole. 'I know
nothing of wine as an expert, and I very seldom
drink it, but it seems to me that a bottle of wine
might be tampered with while it was still in the
cellar, especially if there was an accomplice in
the hotel.'

'You think, then, that you are not yet rid of
all your conspirators?'

'I think that Jules might still have an
accomplice within the building.'

'And that a bottle of wine could be opened and
recorked without leaving any trace of the
operation?' Babylon was a trifle sarcastic.

'I don't see the necessity of opening the
bottle in order to poison the wine,' said
Racksole. 'I have never tried to poison anybody
by means of a bottle of wine, and I don't lay
claim to any natural talent as a poisoner, but I
think I could devise several ways of managing the
trick. Of course, I admit I may be entirely
mistaken as to Jules' intentions.'

'Ah!' said Félix Babylon. 'The wine
cellars beneath us are one of the wonders of
London. I hope you are aware, Mr Racksole, that
when you bought the Grand Babylon you bought what
is probably the finest stock of wines in England,
if not in Europe. In the valuation I reckoned
them at sixty thousand pounds. And I may say that
I always took care that the cellars were properly
guarded. Even Jules would experience a serious
difficulty in breaking into the cellars without
the connivance of the wine-clerk, and the
wine-clerk is, or was, incorruptible.'

'I am ashamed to say that I have not yet
inspected my wines,' smiled Racksole; 'I have
never given them a thought. Once or twice I have
taken the trouble to make a tour of the hotel, but
I omitted the cellars in my excursions.'

'Impossible, my dear fellow!' said Babylon,
amused at such a confession, to him - a great
connoisseur and lover of fine wines -
almost incredible. 'But really you must see them
to-morrow. If I may, I will accompany you.'

'Why not to-night?' Racksole suggested, calmly.

'To-night! It is very late: Hubbard will have
gone to bed.'

'And may I ask who is Hubbard? I remember the
name but dimly.'

'Hubbard is the wine-clerk of the Grand
Babylon,' said Félix, with a certain
emphasis. 'A sedate man of forty. He has the
keys of the cellars. He knows every bottle of
every bin, its date, its qualities, its value.
And he's a teetotaler. Hubbard is a curiosity.
No wine can leave the cellars without his
knowledge, and no person can enter the cellars
without his knowledge. At least, that is how it
was in my time,' Babylon added.

'We will wake him,' said Racksole.

'But it is one o'clock in the morning,' Babylon
protested.

'Never mind - that is, if you consent to
accompany me. A cellar is the same by night as by
day. Therefore, why not now?'

Babylon shrugged his shoulders. 'As you wish,'
he agreed, with his indestructible politeness.

'And now to find this Mr Hubbard, with his key
of the cupboard,' said Racksole, as they walked
out of the room together. Although the hour was
so late, the hotel was not, of course, closed for
the night. A few guests still remained about in
the public rooms, and a few fatigued waiters were
still in attendance. One of these latter was
despatched in search of the singular Mr Hubbard,
and it fortunately turned out that this gentleman
had not actually retired, though he was on the
point of doing so. He brought the keys to Mr
Racksole in person, and after he had had a little
chat with his former master, the proprietor and
the ex-proprietor of the Grand Babylon Hotel
proceeded on their way to the cellars.

These cellars extend over, or rather under,
quite half the superficial areas of the whole
hotel - the longitudinal half which lies next to
the Strand. Owing to the fact that the ground
slopes sharply from the Strand to the river, the
Grand Babylon is, so to speak, deeper near the
Strand than it is near the Thames. Towards the
Thames there is, below the entrance level, a
basement and a sub-basement. Towards the Strand
there is basement, sub-basement, and the huge wine
cellars beneath all. After descending the four
flights of the service stairs, and traversing a
long passage running parallel with the kitchen,
the two found themselves opposite a door, which,
on being unlocked, gave access to another flight
of stairs. At the foot of this was the main
entrance to the cellars. Outside the entrance was
the wine-lift,
for the ascension of delicious fluids to the
upper floors, and, opposite, Mr Hubbard's little
office. There was electric light everywhere.
Babylon, who, as being most accustomed to them,
held the bunch of keys, opened the great door, and
then they were in the first cellar - the first of
a suite of five. Racksole was struck not only by
the icy coolness of the place, but also by its
vastness. Babylon had seized a portable electric
handlight, attached to a long wire, which lay
handy, and, waving it about, disclosed the
dimensions of the place. By that flashing
illumination the subterranean chamber looked
unutterably weird and mysterious, with its rows of
numbered bins, stretching away into the distance
till the radiance was reduced to the occasional
far gleam of the light on the shoulder of a
bottle. Then Babylon switched on the fixed
electric lights, and Theodore Racksole entered
upon a personally-conducted tour of what was quite
the most interesting part of his own property.

To see the innocent enthusiasm of Félix
Babylon for these stores of exhilarating liquid
was what is called in the North 'a sight for sair
een'. He displayed to Racksole's bewildered gaze,
in their due order, all the wines of three
continents - nay, of four, for the superb and
luscious Constantia wine of Cape Colony was not
wanting in that most catholic collection of
vintages. Beginning with the unsurpassed products
of Burgundy, he continued with the clarets of
Médoc, Bordeaux, and Sauterne; then to the
champagnes of Ay, Hautvilliers, and Pierry; then
to the hocks and moselles of Germany, and the
brilliant imitation champagnes of Main, Neckar,
and Naumburg; then to the famous and adorable
Tokay of Hungary, and all the Austrian varieties
of French wines, including Carlowitz and Somlauer;
then to the dry sherries of Spain, including
purest Manzanilla, and Amontillado, and Vino de
Pasto; then to the wines of Malaga, both sweet and
dry, and all the 'Spanish reds' from Catalonia,
including the dark 'Tent' so often used
sacramentally; then to the renowned port of
Oporto. Then he proceeded to the Italian cellar,
and descanted upon the excellence of Barolo from
Piedmont, of Chianti from Tuscany, of Orvieto from
the Roman States, of the 'Tears of Christ' from
Naples, and the commoner Marsala from Sicily. And
so on, to an extent and with a fullness of detail
which cannot be rendered here.

At the end of the suite of cellars there was a
glazed door, which, as could be seen, gave access
to a supplemental and smaller cellar, an apartment
about fifteen or sixteen feet square.

'Anything special in there?' asked Racksole
curiously, as they stood before the door, and
looked within at the seined ends of bottles.

'Ah!' exclaimed Babylon, almost smacking his
lips, 'therein lies the cream of all.'

'The best champagne, I suppose?' said Racksole.

'Yes,' said Babylon, 'the best champagne is
there - a very special Sillery, as exquisite as
you will find anywhere. But I see, my friend,
that you fall into the common error of putting
champagne first among wines. That distinction
belongs to Burgundy. You have old Burgundy in
that cellar, Mr Racksole, which cost me - how much
do you think? - eighty pounds a bottle. Probably
it will never be drunk,' he added with a sigh.
'It is too expensive even for princes and
plutocrats.'

'Yes, it will,' said Racksole quickly. 'You
and I will have a bottle up to-morrow.'

'Then,' continued Babylon, still riding his
hobby-horse, 'there is a sample of the Rhine wine
dated 1706 which caused such a sensation at the
Vienna Exhibition of 1873. There is also a
singularly glorious Persian wine from Shiraz, the
like of which I have never seen elsewhere. Also
there is an unrivalled vintage of
Romanée-Conti, greatest of all modern
Burgundies. If I remember right Prince Eugen
invariably has a bottle when he comes to
stay here. It is not on the hotel wine list, of
course, and only a few customers know of it. We
do not precisely hawk it about the dining-room.'

'Indeed!' said Racksole. 'Let us go inside.'

They entered the stone apartment, rendered
almost sacred by the preciousness of its contents,
and Racksole looked round with a strangely intent
and curious air. At the far side was a grating,
through which came a feeble light.

'What is that?' asked the millionaire sharply.

'That is merely a ventilation grating. Good
ventilation is absolutely essential.'

The two men stood tense and silent for a while,
listening, under the ray of the single electric
light in the ceiling. Half the cellar was
involved in gloom. At length Racksole walked
firmly down the central passage-way between the
bins and turned to the corner at the right.

'Come out, you villain!' he said in a low,
well-nigh vicious tone, and dragged up a cowering
figure.

He had expected to find a man, but it was his
own daughter, Nella Racksole, upon whom he had
laid angry hands.

Chapter Twenty-Three

FURTHER EVENTS IN THE CELLAR

'WELL, Father,' Nella greeted her
astounded parent. 'You should make sure that you
have got hold of the right person before you use
all that terrible muscular force of yours. I do
believe you have broken my shoulder bone.' She
rubbed her shoulder with a comical expression of
pain, and then stood up before the two men. The
skirt of her dark grey dress was torn and dirty,
and the usually trim Nella looked as though she
had been shot down a canvas fire-escape.
Mechanically she smoothed her frock, and gave a
straightening touch to her hair.

'May I inquire what you are doing in my wine
cellar, Nella Racksole?' said the millionaire a
little stiffly He was certainly somewhat annoyed
at having mistaken his daughter for a criminal;
moreover, he hated to be surprised, and upon this
occasion he had been surprised beyond any ordinary
surprise; lastly, he was not at all pleased that
Nella should be observed in that strange
predicament by a stranger.

'I will tell you,' said Nella. 'I had been
reading rather late in my room - the night was so
close. I heard Big Ben strike half-past twelve,
and then I put the book down, and went out on to
the balcony of my window for a little fresh air
before going to bed. I leaned over the balcony
very quietly - you will remember that I am on the
third floor now - and looked down below into the
little sunk yard which separates the wall of the
hotel from Salisbury Lane. I was rather
astonished to see a figure creeping across the
yard. I knew there was no entrance into the hotel
from that yard, and besides, it is fifteen or
twenty feet below the level of the street. So I
watched. The figure went close up against the
wall, and disappeared from my view. I leaned over
the balcony as far as I dared, but I couldn't see
him. I could hear him, however.'

'What could you hear?' questioned Racksole
sharply.

'It sounded like a sawing noise,' said Nella;
'and it went on for quite a long time - nearly a
quarter of an hour, I should think - a rasping
sort of noise.'

'Why on earth didn't you come and warn me or
someone else in the hotel?' asked Racksole.

'Oh, I don't know, Dad,' she replied sweetly.
'I had got interested in it, and I thought I would
see it out myself. Well, as I was saying, Mr
Babylon,' she continued, addressing her remarks to
Félix, with a dazzling smile, 'that noise
went on for quite a long time. At last it
stopped, and the figure reappeared from under the
wall, crossed the yard, climbed up the opposite
wall by some means or other, and so over the
railings into Salisbury Lane. I felt rather
relieved then, because I knew he hadn't actually
broken into the hotel. He walked down Salisbury
Lane very slowly. A policeman was just coming up.
"Goodnight, officer," I heard him say to the
policeman, and he asked him for a match. The
policeman supplied the match, and the other man
lighted a cigarette, and proceeded further down
the lane. By cricking your neck from my window,
Mr Babylon, you can get a glimpse of the
Embankment and the river. I saw the man cross the
Embankment, and lean over the river wall, where he
seemed to be talking to some one. He then walked
along the Embankment to Westminster and that was
the last I saw of him. I waited a minute or two
for him to come back, but he didn't come back, and
so I thought it was about time I began to make
inquiries into the affair. I went downstairs
instantly, and out of the hotel, through the
quadrangle, into Salisbury Lane, and I looked over
those railings. There was a ladder on the other
side, by which it was perfectly easy - once you
had got over the railings - to climb down into the
yard. I was horribly afraid lest someone might
walk up Salisbury Lane and catch me in the act of
negotiating those railings, but no one did, and I
surmounted them, with no worse damage than a torn
skirt. I crossed the yard on tiptoe, and I found
that in the wall, close to the ground and almost
exactly under my window, there was an iron
grating, about one foot by fourteen inches. I
suspected, as there was no other ironwork near,
that the mysterious visitor must have been sawing
at this grating for private purposes of his own.
I gave it a good shake, and I was not at all
surprised that a good part of it came off in my
hand, leaving just enough room for a person to
creep through. I decided that I would creep
through, and now wish I hadn't. I don't know, Mr
Babylon, whether you have ever tried to creep
through a small hole with a skirt on. Have you?'

'I have not had that pleasure,' said little
Félix, bowing again, and absently taking up
a bottle which lay to his hand.

'Well, you are fortunate,' the imperturbable
Nella resumed. 'For quite three minutes I thought
I should perish in that grating, Dad, with my
shoulder inside and the rest of me outside.
However, at last, by the most amazing and
agonizing efforts, I pulled myself through and
fell into this extraordinary cellar more dead than
alive. Then I wondered what I should do next.
Should I wait for the mysterious visitor to
return, and stab him with my pocket scissors if he
tried to enter, or should I raise an alarm? First
of all I replaced the broken grating, then I
struck a match, and I saw that I had got landed in
a wilderness of bottles. The match went out, and
I hadn't another one. So I sat down in the corner
to think. I had just decided to wait and see if
the visitor returned, when I heard footsteps, and
then voices; and then you came in. I must say I
was rather taken aback, especially as I recognized
the voice of Mr Babylon. You see, I didn't want
to frighten you. If I had bobbed up from behind
the bottles and said "Booh!" you would have had a
serious shock. I wanted to think of a way of
breaking my presence gently to you. But you saved
me the trouble, Dad. Was I really breathing so
loudly that you could hear me?'

The girl ended her strange recital, and there
was a moment's silence in the cellar. Racksole
merely nodded an affirmative to her concluding
question.

'Well, Nell, my girl,' said the millionaire at
length, 'we are much obliged for your gymnastic
efforts - very much obliged. But now, I think you
had better go off to bed. There is going to be
some serious trouble here, I'll lay my last dollar
on that?'

'But if there is to be a burglary I should so
like to see it, Dad,' Nella pleaded. 'I've never
seen a burglar caught red-handed.'

'Mr Babylon informs me that Jules is in
London,' said Racksole quietly.

'Jules!' she exclaimed under her breath, and
her tone changed instantly to the utmost
seriousness. 'Switch off the light, quick!'
Springing to the switch, she put the cellar in
darkness.

'What's that for?' said her father.

'If he comes back he would see the light, and
be frightened away,' said Nella. 'That wouldn't
do at all.'

'It wouldn't, Miss Racksole,' said Babylon, and
there was in his voice a note of admiration for
the girl's sagacity which Racksole heard with high
paternal pride.

'Listen, Nella,' said the latter, drawing his
daughter to him in the profound gloom of the
cellar. 'We fancy that Jules may be trying to
tamper with a certain bottle of wine - a bottle
which might possibly be drunk by Prince Eugen.
Now do you think that the man you saw might have
been Jules?'

'I hadn't previously thought of him as being
Jules, but immediately you mentioned the name I
somehow knew that he was. Yes, I am sure it was
Jules.'

'Well, just hear what I have to say. There is
no time to lose. If he is coming at all he will
be here very soon - and you can help.' Racksole
explained what he thought Jules' tactics might be.
He proposed that if the man returned he should not
be interfered with, but merely watched from the
other side of the glass door.

'You want, as it were, to catch Mr Jules
alive?' said Babylon, who seemed rather taken
aback at this novel method of dealing with
criminals. 'Surely,' he added, 'it would be
simpler and easier to inform the police of your
suspicion, and to leave everything to them.'

'My dear fellow,' said Racksole, 'we have
already gone much too far without the police to
make it advisable for us to call them in at this
somewhat advanced stage of the proceedings.
Besides, if you must know it, I have a particular
desire to capture the scoundrel myself. I will
leave you and Nella here, since Nella insists on
seeing everything, and I will arrange things so
that once he has entered the cellar Jules will not
get out of it again - at any rate through the
grating. You had better place yourselves on the
other side of the glass door, in the big cellar;
you will be in a position to observe from there, I
will skip off at once. All you have to do is to
take note of what the fellow does. If he has any
accomplices within the hotel we shall probably be
able by that means to discover who the accomplice
is.'

Lighting a match and shading it with his hands,
Racksole showed them both out of the little
cellar. 'Now if you lock this glass door on the
outside he can't escape this way: the panes of
glass are too small, and the woodwork too stout.
So, if he comes into the trap, you two will have
the pleasure of actually seeing him frantically
writhe therein, without any personal danger; but
perhaps you'd better not show yourselves.'

In another moment Félix Babylon and
Nella were left to themselves in the darkness of
the cellar, listening to the receding footfalls of
Theodore Racksole. But the sound of these
footfalls had not died away before another sound
greeted their ears - the grating of the small
cellar was being removed.

'I hope your father will be in time,' whispered
Félix.

'Hush!' the girl warned him, and they stooped
side by side in tense silence.

A man cautiously but very neatly wormed his
body through the aperture of the grating. The
watchers could only see his form indistinctly in
the darkness. Then, being fairly within the
cellar, he walked without the least hesitation to
the electric switch and turned on the light. It
was unmistakably Jules, and he knew the geography
of the cellar very well. Babylon could with
difficulty repress a start as he saw this bold and
unscrupulous ex-waiter moving with such an air of
assurance and determination about the precious
cellar. Jules went directly to a small bin which
was numbered 17, and took therefrom the topmost
bottle.

Jules neatly and quickly removed the seal with
an instrument which he had clearly brought for the
purpose. He then took a little flat box from his
pocket, which seemed to contain a sort of black
salve. Rubbing his finger in this, he smeared the
top of the neck of the bottle with it, just where
the cork came against the glass. In another
instant he had deftly replaced the seal and
restored the bottle to its position. He then
turned off the light, and made for the aperture.
When he was half-way through Nella exclaimed, 'He
will escape, after all. Dad has not had time - we
must stop him.'

But Babylon, that embodiment of caution,
forcibly, but nevertheless politely, restrained
this Yankee girl, whom he deemed so rash and
imprudent, and before she could free herself the
lithe form of Jules had disappeared.

Chapter Twenty-Four

THE BOTTLE OF WINE

AS regards Theodore Racksole, who was
to have caught his man from the outside of the
cellar, he made his way as rapidly as possible
from the wine-cellars, up to the ground floor, out
of the hotel by the quadrangle, through the
quadrangle, and out into the top of Salisbury
Lane. Now, owing to the vastness of the structure
of the Grand Babylon, the mere distance thus to be
traversed amounted to a little short of a quarter
of a mile, and, as it included a number of stairs,
about two dozen turnings, and several passages
which at that time of night were in darkness more
or less complete, Racksole could not have been
expected to accomplish the journey in less than
five minutes. As a matter of fact, six minutes
had elapsed before he reached the top of Salisbury
Lane, because he had been delayed nearly a minute
by some questions addressed to him by a muddled
and whisky-laden guest who had got lost in the
corridors. As everybody knows, there is a sharp
short bend in Salisbury Lane near the top.
Racksole ran round this at good racing speed, but
he was unfortunate enough to run straight up
against the very policeman who had not long before
so courteously supplied Jules with a match. The
policeman seemed to be scarcely in so pliant a
mood just then.

'Hullo!' he said, his naturally suspicious
nature being doubtless aroused by the spectacle of
a bareheaded man in evening dress running
violently down the lane. 'What's this? Where are
you for in such a hurry?' and he forcibly detained
Theodore Racksole for a moment and scrutinized his
face.

'Now, officer,' said Racksole quietly, 'none of
your larks, if you please. I've no time to lose.'

'Beg your pardon, sir,' the policeman remarked,
though hesitatingly and not quite with good
temper, and Racksole was allowed to proceed on his
way. The millionaire's scheme for trapping Jules
was to get down into the little sunk yard by means
of the ladder, and then to secrete himself behind
some convenient abutment of brickwork until Mr Tom
Jackson should have got into the cellar. He
therefore nimbly surmounted the railings - the
railings of his own hotel - and was gingerly
descending the ladder, when lo! a rough hand
seized him by the coat-collar and with a ferocious
jerk urged him backwards. The fact was, Theodore
Racksole had counted without the policeman. That
guardian of the peace, mistrusting Racksole's
manner, quietly followed him down the lane. The
sight of the millionaire climbing the railings had
put him on his mettle, and the result was the
ignominious capture of Racksole. In vain Theodore
expostulated, explained, anathematized. Only one
thing would satisfy the stolid policeman - namely,
that Racksole should return with him to the hotel
and there establish his identity. If Racksole
then proved to be Racksole, owner of the Grand
Babylon, well and good - the policeman promised to
apologize. So Theodore had no alternative but to
accept the suggestion. To prove his identity was,
of course, the work of only a few minutes, after
which Racksole, annoyed, but cool as ever,
returned to his railings, while the policeman went
off to another part of his beat, where he would be
likely to meet a comrade and have a chat.

In the meantime, our friend Jules, sublimely
unconscious of the altercation going on outside,
and of the special risk which he ran, was of
course actually in the cellar, which he had
reached before Racksole got to the railings for
the first time. It was, indeed, a happy chance
for Jules that his exit from the cellar coincided
with the period during which Racksole was absent
from the railings. As Racksole came down the lane
for the second time, he saw a figure walking about
fifty yards in front of him towards the
Embankment. Instantly he divined that it was
Jules, and that the policeman had thrown him just
too late. He ran, and Jules, hearing the noise of
pursuit, ran also. The ex-waiter was fleet; he
made direct for a certain spot in the Embankment
wall, and, to the intense astonishment of
Racksole, jumped clean over the wall, as it
seemed, into the river. 'Is he so desperate as to
commit suicide?' Racksole exclaimed as he ran, but
a second later the puff and snort of a steam
launch told him that Jules was not quite driven to
suicide. As the millionaire crossed the
Embankment roadway he saw the funnel of the launch
move out from under the river-wall. It swerved
into midstream and headed towards London Bridge.
There was a silent mist over the river. Racksole
was helpless. . . .

Although Racksole had now been twice worsted in
a contest of wits within the precincts of the
Grand Babylon, once by Rocco and once by Jules, he
could not fairly blame himself for the present
miscarriage of his plans - a miscarriage due to
the meddlesomeness of an extraneous person,
combined with pure ill-fortune. He did not,
therefore, permit the accident to interfere with
his sleep that night.

On the following day he sought out Prince
Aribert, between whom and himself there now
existed a feeling of unmistakable, frank
friendship, and disclosed to him the happenings of
the previous night, and particularly the tampering
with the bottle of Romanée-Conti.

'I believe you dined with Prince Eugen last
night?'

'I did. And curiously enough we had a bottle
of Romanée-Conti, an admirable wine, of
which Eugen is passionately fond.'

'And you will dine with him to-night?'

'Most probably. To-day will, I fear, be our
last day here. Eugen wishes to return to Posen
early to-morrow.'

'Has it struck you, Prince,' said Racksole,
'that if Jules had succeeded in poisoning your
nephew, he would probably have succeeded also in
poisoning you?'

'I had not thought of it,' laughed Aribert,
'but it would seem so. It appears that so long as
he brings down his particular quarry, Jules is
careless of anything else that may be accidentally
involved in the destruction. However, we need
have no fear on that score now. You know the
bottle, and you can destroy it at once.'

'But I do not propose to destroy it,' said
Racksole calmly. 'If Prince Eugen asks for
Romanée-Conti to be served to-night, as he
probably will, I propose that that precise bottle
shall be served to him - and to you.'

'Then you would poison us in spite of
ourselves?'

'Scarcely,' Racksole smiled. 'My notion is to
discover the accomplices within the hotel. I have
already inquired as to the wine-clerk, Hubbard.
Now does it not occur to you as extraordinary that
on this particular day Mr Hubbard should be ill in
bed? Hubbard, I am informed, is suffering from an
attack of stomach poisoning, which has supervened
during the night. He says that he does not know
what can have caused it. His place in the wine
cellars will be taken to-day by his assistant, a
mere youth, but to all appearances a fairly smart
youth. I need not say that we shall keep an eye
on that youth.'

'One moment,' Prince Aribert interrupted. 'I
do not quite understand how you think the
poisoning was to have been effected.'

'The bottle is now under examination by an
expert, who has instructions to remove as little
as possible of the stuff which Jules put on the
rim of the mouth of it. It will be secretly
replaced in its bin during the day. My idea is
that by the mere action of pouring out the wine
takes up some of the poison, which I deem to be
very strong, and thus becomes fatal as it enters
the glass.'

'But surely the servant in attendance would
wipe the mouth of the bottle?'

'Very carelessly, perhaps. And moreover he
would be extremely unlikely to wipe off all the
stuff; some of it has been ingeniously placed just
on the inside edge of the rim. Besides, suppose
he forgot to wipe the bottle?'

'Prince Eugen is always served at dinner by
Hans. It is an honour which the faithful old
fellow reserves for himself.'

That night Prince Aribert dined with his august
nephew in the superb dining-room of the Royal
apartments. Hans served, the dishes being brought
to the door by other servants. Aribert found his
nephew despondent and taciturn. On the previous
day, when, after the futile interview with Sampson
Levi, Prince Eugen had despairingly threatened to
commit suicide, in such a manner as to make it
'look like an accident', Aribert had compelled him
to give his word of honour not to do so.

'What wine will your Royal Highness take?'
asked old Hans in his soothing tones, when the
soup was served.

The famous and unsurpassable Burgundy was
served with the roast. Old Hans brought it
tenderly in its wicker cradle, inserted the
corkscrew with mathematical precision, and drew
the cork, which he offered for his master's
inspection. Eugen nodded, and told him to put it
down. Aribert watched with intense interest. He
could not for an instant believe that Hans was not
the very soul of fidelity, and yet, despite
himself, Racksole's words had caused him a certain
uneasiness. At that moment Prince Eugen murmured
across the table:

'Aribert, I withdraw my promise. Observe that,
I withdraw it.' Aribert shook his head
emphatically, without removing his gaze from Hans.
The white-haired servant perfunctorily dusted his
napkin round the neck of the bottle of
Romanée-Conti, and poured out a glass.
Aribert trembled from head to foot.

Eugen took up the glass and held it to the
light.

'Don't drink it,' said Aribert very quietly.
'It is poisoned.'

'Poisoned!' exclaimed Prince Eugen.

'Poisoned, sire!' exclaimed old Hans, with an
air of profound amazement and concern, and he
seized the glass. 'Impossible, sire. I myself
opened the bottle. No one else has touched it,
and the cork was perfect.'

'I tell you it is poisoned,' Aribert repeated.

'Your Highness will pardon an old man,' said
Hans, 'but to say that this wine is poison is to
say that I am a murderer. I will prove to you
that it is not poisoned. I will drink it.' And he
raised the glass to his trembling lips. In that
moment Aribert saw that old Hans, at any rate, was
not an accomplice of Jules. Springing up from his
seat, he knocked the glass from the aged
servitor's hands, and the fragments of it fell
with a light tinkling crash partly on the table
and partly on the floor. The Prince and the
servant gazed at one another in a distressing and
terrible silence. There was a slight noise, and
Aribert looked aside. He saw that Eugen's body
had slipped forward limply over the left arm of
his chair; the Prince's arms hung straight and
lifeless; his eyes were closed; he was
unconscious.

'Hans!' murmured Aribert. 'Hans! What is
this?'

Chapter Twenty-Five

THE STEAM LAUNCH

MR TOM JACKSON's notion of making
good his escape from the hotel by means of a steam
launch was an excellent one, so far as it went,
but Theodore Racksole, for his part, did not
consider that it went quite far enough. Theodore
Racksole opined, with peculiar glee, that he now
had a tangible and definite clue for the catching
of the Grand Babylon's ex-waiter. He knew nothing
of the Port of London, but he happened to know a
good deal of the far more complicated, though
somewhat smaller, Port of New York, and he sure
there ought to be no extraordinary difficulty in
getting hold of Jules' steam launch. To those who
are not thoroughly familiar with it the River
Thames and its docks, from London Bridge to
Gravesend, seems a vast and uncharted wilderness
of craft - a wilderness in which it would be
perfectly easy to hide even a three-master
successfully. To such people the idea of looking
for a steam launch on the river would be about
equivalent to the idea of looking for a needle in
a bundle of hay. But the fact is, there are
hundreds of men between St Katherine's Wharf and
Blackwall who literally know the Thames as the
suburban householder knows his back-garden - who
can recognize thousands of ships and put a name to
them at a distance of half a mile, who are
informed as to every movement of vessels on the
great stream, who know all the captains, all the
engineers, all the lightermen, all the pilots, all
the licensed watermen, and all the unlicensed
scoundrels from the Tower to Gravesend, and a lot
further. By these experts of the Thames the
slightest unusual event on the water is noticed
and discussed - a wherry cannot change hands but
they will guess shrewdly upon the price paid and
the intentions of the new owner with regard to it.
They have a habit of watching the river for the
mere interest of the sight, and they talk about
everything like housewives gathered of an evening
round the cottage door. If the first mate of a
Castle
Liner gets the sack they will be able to tell you
what he said to the captain, what the old man said
to him, and what both said to the Board, and
having finished off that affair they will
cheerfully turn to discussing whether Bill Stevens
sank his barge outside the West Indian No.2 by
accident or on purpose.

Theodore Racksole had no satisfactory means of
identifying the steam launch which carried away Mr
Tom Jackson. The sky had clouded over soon after
midnight, and there was also a slight mist, and he
had only been able to make out that it was a low
craft, about sixty feet long, probably painted
black. He had personally kept a watch all through
the night on vessels going upstream, and during
the next morning he had a man to take his place
who warned him whenever a steam launch went
towards Westminster. At noon, after his
conversation with Prince Aribert, he went down the
river in a hired row-boat as far as the Custom
House, and poked about everywhere, in search of
any vessel which could by any possibility be the
one he was in search of. But he found nothing.
He was, therefore, tolerably sure that the
mysterious launch lay somewhere below the Custom
House. At the Custom House stairs, he landed, and
asked for a very high official - an official
inferior only to a Commissioner - whom he had
entertained once in New York, and who had met him
in London on business at Lloyd's. In the large
but dingy office of this great man a long
conversation took place - a conversation in which
Racksole had to exercise a certain amount of
persuasive power, and which ultimately ended in
the high official ringing his bell.

'Desire Mr Hazell - room No. 332 - to speak to
me,' said the official to the boy who answered the
summons, and then, turning to Racksole: 'I need
hardly repeat, my dear Mr Racksole, that this is
strictly unofficial.'

'Agreed, of course,' said Racksole.

Mr Hazell entered. He was a young man of about
thirty, dressed in blue serge, with a pale, keen
face, a brown moustache and a rather handsome
brown beard.

'Mr Hazell,' said the high official, 'let me
introduce you to Mr Theodore Racksole - you will
doubtless be familiar with his name. Mr Hazell,'
he went on to Racksole, 'is one of our outdoor
staff - what we call an examining officer. Just
now he is doing night duty. He has a boat on the
river and a couple of men, and the right to board
and examine any craft whatever. What Mr Hazell
and his crew don't know about the Thames between
here and Gravesend isn't knowledge.'

'Glad to meet you, sir,' said Racksole simply,
and they shook hands. Racksole observed with
satisfaction that Mr Hazell was entirely at his
ease.

'Now, Hazell,' the high official continued, 'Mr
Racksole wants you to help in a little private
expedition on the river to-night. I will give you
a night's leave. I sent for you partly because I
thought you would enjoy the affair and partly
because I think I can rely on you to regard it as
entirely unofficial and not to talk about it. You
understand? I dare say you will have no cause to
regret having obliged Mr Racksole.'

'I think I grasp the situation,' said Hazell,
with a slight smile.

'And, by the way,' added the high official,
'although the business is unofficial, it might be
well if you wore your official overcoat. See?'

'Decidedly,' said Hazell; 'I should have done
so in any case.'

'And now, Mr Hazell,' said Racksole, 'will you
do me the pleasure of lunching with me? If you
agree, I should like to lunch at the place you
usually frequent.'

So it came to pass that Theodore Racksole and
George Hazell, outdoor clerk in the Customs,
lunched together at 'Thomas's Chop-House', in the
city of London, upon mutton-chops and coffee. The
millionaire soon discovered that he had got hold
of a keen-witted man and a person of much insight.

'Tell me,' said Hazell, when they had reached
the cigarette stage, 'are the magazine writers
anything like correct?'

'What do you mean?' asked Racksole, mystified.

'Well, you're a millionaire - "one of the
best", I believe. One often sees articles on and
interviews with millionaires, which describe their
private railroad cars, their steam yachts on the
Hudson, their marble stables, and so on, and so
on. Do you happen to have those things?'

'I have a private car on the New York Central,
and I have a two thousand ton schooner-yacht -
though it isn't on the Hudson. It happens just
now to be on East River. And I am bound to admit
that the stables of my uptown place are fitted
with marble.' Racksole laughed.

'Ah!' said Hazell. 'Now I can believe that I
am lunching with a millionaire. It's strange how
facts like those - unimportant in themselves -
appeal to the imagination. You seem to me a real
millionaire now. You've given me some personal
information; I'll give you some in return. I earn
three hundred a year, and perhaps sixty pounds a
year extra for overtime. I live by myself in two
rooms in Muscovy Court. I've as much money as I
need, and I always do exactly what I like outside
office. As regards the office, I do as little
work as I can, on principle - it's a fight between
us and the Commissioners who shall get the best.
They try to do us down, and we try to do them down
- it's pretty even on the whole. All's fair in
war, you know, and there ain't no ten commandments
in a Government office.'

Racksole laughed. 'Can you get off this
afternoon?' he asked.

'Certainly,' said Hazell; 'I'll get one of my
pals to sign on for me, and then I shall be free.'

'Well,' said Racksole, 'I should like you to
come down with me to the Grand Babylon. Then we
can talk over my little affair at length. And may
we go on your boat? I want to meet your crew.'

'That will be all right,' Hazell remarked. 'My
two men are the idlest, most soul-less chaps you
ever saw. They eat too much, and they have an
enormous appetite for beer; but they know the
river, and they know their business, and they will
do anything within the fair game if they are paid
for it, and aren't asked to hurry.'

That night, just after dark, Theodore Racksole
embarked with his new friend George Hazell in one
of the black-painted Customs wherries, manned by a
crew of two men - both the later freemen of the
river, a distinction which carries with it certain
privileges unfamiliar to the mere landsman. It
was a cloudy and oppressive evening, not a star
showing to illumine the slow tide, now just past
its flood. The vast forms of steamers at anchor -
chiefly those of the General Steam Navigation and
the Aberdeen Line - heaved themselves high out of
the water, straining sluggishly at their mooring
buoys. On either side the naked walls of
warehouses rose like grey precipices from the
stream, holding forth quaint arms of steam-cranes.
To the west the Tower Bridge spanned the river
with its formidable arch, and above that its
suspended footpath - a hundred and fifty feet from
earth. Down towards the east and the Pool of
London a forest of funnels and masts was dimly
outlined against the sinister sky. Huge barges,
each steered by a single man at the end of a pair
of giant oars, lumbered and swirled down-stream at
all angles. Occasionally a tug snorted busily
past, flashing its red and green signals and
dragging an unwieldy tail of barges in its wake.
Then a Margate passenger steamer, its electric
lights gleaming from every porthole, swerved round
to anchor, with its load of two thousand fatigued
excursionists. Over everything brooded an air of
mystery - a spirit and feeling of strangeness,
remoteness, and the inexplicable. As the broad
flat little boat bobbed its way under the shadow
of enormous hulks, beneath stretched hawsers, and
past buoys covered with green slime, Racksole
could scarcely believe that he was in the very
heart of London - the most prosaic city in the
world. He had a queer idea that almost anything
might happen in this seeming waste of waters at
this weird hour of ten o'clock. It appeared
incredible to him that only a mile or two away
people were sitting in theatres applauding farces,
and that at Cannon Street Station, a few yards
off, other people were calmly taking the train to
various highly respectable suburbs whose names he
was gradually learning. He had the uplifting
sensation of being in another world which comes to
us sometimes amid surroundings violently different
from our usual surroundings. The most ordinary
noises
- of men calling, of a chain running through a
slot, of a distant siren - translated themselves
to his ears into terrible and haunting sounds,
full of portentous significance. He looked over
the side of the boat into the brown water, and
asked himself what frightful secrets lay hidden in
its depth. Then he put his hand into his
hip-pocket and touched the stock of his Colt
revolver - that familiar substance comforted him.

The oarsmen had instructions to drop slowly
down to the Pool, as the wide reach below the
Tower is called. These two men had not been
previously informed of the precise object of the
expedition, but now that they were safely afloat
Hazell judged it expedient to give them some
notion of it. 'We expect to come across a rather
suspicious steam launch,' he said. 'My friend
here is very anxious to get a sight of her, and
until he has seen her nothing definite can be
done.'

'What sort of a craft is she, sir?' asked the
stroke oar, a fat-faced man who seemed absolutely
incapable of any serious exertion.

'I don't know,' Racksole replied; 'but as near
as I can judge, she's about sixty feet in length,
and painted black. I fancy I shall recognize her
when I see her.'

'Not much to go by, that,' exclaimed the other
man curtly. But he said no more. He, as well as
his mate, had received from Theodore Racksole one
English sovereign as a kind of preliminary fee,
and an English sovereign will do a lot towards
silencing the natural sarcastic tendencies and
free speech of a Thames waterman.

'There's one thing I noticed,' said Racksole
suddenly, 'and I forgot to tell you of it, Mr
Hazell. Her screw seemed to move with a rather
irregular, lame sort of beat.'

'Ay, that's it, sure enough,' agreed the man in
the bows. 'And if it's her you want, I seed her
lying up against Cherry Gardens Pier this very
morning.'

'Let us go to Cherry Gardens Pier by all means,
as soon as possible,' Racksole said, and the boat
swung across stream and then began to creep down
by the right bank, feeling its way past wharves,
many of which, even at that hour, were still busy
with their cranes, that descended empty into the
bellies of ships and came up full. As the two
watermen gingerly manoeuvred the boat on the
ebbing tide, Hazell explained to the millionaire
that the 'Squirm' was one of the most notorious
craft on the river. It appeared that when anyone
had a nefarious or underhand scheme afoot which
necessitated river work Everett's launch was
always available for a suitable monetary
consideration. The 'Squirm' had got itself into a
thousand scrapes, and out of those scrapes again
with safety, if not precisely with honour. The
river police kept a watchful eye on it, and the
chief marvel about the whole thing was that old
Everett, the owner, had never yet been seriously
compromised in any illegal escapade. Not once had
the officer of the law been able to prove anything
definite against the proprietor of the 'Squirm',
though several of its quondam hirers were at that
very moment in various of Her Majesty's prisons
throughout the country. Latterly, however, the
launch, with its damaged propeller, which Everett
consistently refused to have repaired, had
acquired an evil reputation, even among
evil-doers, and this fraternity had gradually come
to abandon it for less easily recognizable craft.

'Your friend, Mr Tom Jackson,' said Hazell to
Racksole, 'committed an error of discretion when
he hired the "Squirm". A scoundrel of his
experience and calibre ought certainly to have
known better than that. You cannot fail to get a
clue now.'

By this time the boat was approaching Cherry
Gardens Pier, but unfortunately a thin night-fog
had swept over the river, and objects could not be
discerned with any clearness beyond a distance of
thirty yards. As the Customs boat scraped down
past the pier all its occupants strained eyes for
a glimpse of the mysterious launch, but nothing
could be seen of it. The boat continued to float
idly down-stream, the men resting on their oars.
Then they narrowly escaped bumping a large
Norwegian sailing vessel at anchor with her stem
pointing down-stream. This ship they passed on
the port side. Just as they got clear of her
bowsprit the fat man cried out excitedly, 'There's
her nose!' and he put the boat about and began to
pull back against the tide.
And surely the missing 'Squirm' was comfortably
anchored on the starboard quarter of the Norwegian
ship, hidden neatly between the ship and the
shore. The men pulled very quietly alongside.

Chapter Twenty-Six

THE NIGHT CHASE AND THE MUDLARK

'I'LL board her to start with,' said
Hazell, whispering to Racksole. 'I'll make out
that I suspect they've got dutiable goods on
board, and that will give me a chance to have a
good look at her.'

Dressed in his official overcoat and peaked
cap, he stepped, rather jauntily as Racksole
thought, on to the low deck of the launch.
'Anyone aboard?' Racksole heard him cry out, and a
woman's voice answered. 'I'm a Customs examining
officer, and I want to search the launch,' Hazell
shouted, and then disappeared down into the little
saloon amidships, and Racksole heard no more. It
seemed to the millionaire that Hazell had been
gone hours, but at length he returned.

'Can't find anything,' he said, as he jumped
into the boat, and then privately to Racksole:
'There's a woman on board. Looks as if she might
coincide with your description of Miss Spencer.
Steam's up, but there's no engineer. I asked
where the engineer was, and she inquired what
business that was of mine, and requested me to get
through with my own business and clear off. Seems
rather a smart sort. I poked my nose into
everything, but I saw no sign of any one else.
Perhaps we'd better pull away and lie near for a
bit, just to see if anything queer occurs.'

'You're quite sure he isn't on board?' Racksole
asked.

'Quite,' said Hazell positively: 'I know how to
search a vessel. See this,' and he handed to
Racksole a sort of steel skewer, about two feet
long, with a wooden handle. 'That,' he said, 'is
one of the Customs' aids to searching.'

'I suppose it wouldn't do to go on board and
carry off the lady?' Racksole suggested
doubtfully.

'Well,' Hazell began, with equal doubtfulness,
'as for that - '

'Where's 'e orf?' It was the man in the bows
who interrupted Hazell. Following the direction
of the man's finger, both Hazell and Racksole saw
with more or less distinctness a dinghy slip away
from the forefoot of the Norwegian vessel and
disappear downstream into the mist.

'Lay down to it now, boys!' said Hazell, and
the heavy Customs boat shot out in pursuit.

'This is going to be a lark,' Racksole
remarked.

'Depends on what you call a lark,' said Hazell;
'it's not much of a lark tearing down midstream
like this in a fog. You never know when you
mayn't be in kingdom come with all these barges
knocking around. I expect that chap hid in the
dinghy when he first caught sight of us, and then
slipped his painter as soon as I'd gone.'

The boat was moving at a rapid pace with the
tide. Steering was a matter of luck and instinct
more than anything else. Every now and then
Hazell, who held the lines, was obliged to jerk
the boat's head sharply round to avoid a barge or
an anchored vessel. It seemed to Racksole that
vessels were anchored all over the stream. He
looked about him anxiously, but for a long time he
could see nothing but mist and vague nautical
forms. Then suddenly he said, quietly enough,
'We're on the right road; I can see him ahead.
We're gaining on him.' In another minute the
dinghy was plainly visible, not twenty yards away,
and the sculler - sculling frantically now - was
unmistakably Jules - Jules in a light tweed suit
and a bowler hat.

'You were right,' Hazell said; 'this is a lark.
I believe I'm getting quite excited. It's more
exciting than playing the trombone in an
orchestra. I'll run him down, eh? - and then we
can drag the chap in from the water.'

Racksole nodded, but at that moment a barge,
with her red sails set, stood out of the fog clean
across the bows of the Customs boat, which
narrowly escaped instant destruction. When they
got clear, and the usual interchange of calm,
nonchalant swearing was over, the dinghy was
barely to be discerned in the mist, and the fat
man was breathing in such a manner that his sighs
might almost have been heard on the banks.
Racksole wanted violently to do something, but
there was nothing to do; he could only sit supine
by Hazell's side in the stern-sheets. Gradually
they began again to overtake the dinghy, whose
one-man crew was evidently tiring. As they came
up, hand over fist, the dinghy's nose swerved
aside, and the tiny craft passed down a water-lane
between two anchored mineral barges, which lay
black and deserted about fifty yards from the
Surrey shore. 'To starboard,' said Racksole.
'No, man!' Hazell replied; 'we can't get through
there. He's bound to come Out below; it's only a
feint. I'll keep our nose straight ahead.'

And they went on, the fat man pounding away,
with a face which glistened even in the thick
gloom. It was an empty dinghy which emerged from
between the two barges and went drifting and
revolving down towards Greenwich.

The fat man gasped a word to his comrade, and
the Customs boat stopped dead.

''E's all right,' said the man in the bows.
'If it's 'im you want, 'e's on one o' them barges,
so you've only got to step on and take 'im orf.'

'That's all,' said a voice out of the depths of
the nearest barge, and it was the voice of Jules,
otherwise known as Mr Tom Jackson.

"Ear 'im?' said the fat man smiling. ''E's a
good 'un, 'e is. But if I was you, Mr Hazell, or
you, sir, I shouldn't step on to that barge so
quick as all that.'

They backed the boat under the stem of the
nearest barge and
gazed upwards.

'It's all right,' said Racksole to Hazell;
'I've got a revolver. How can I clamber up
there?'

'Yes, I dare say you've got a revolver all
right,' Hazell replied sharply. 'But you mustn't
use it. There mustn't be any noise. We should
have the river police down on us in a twinkling if
there
was a revolver shot, and it would be the ruin of
me. If an inquiry was held the Commissioners
wouldn't take any official notice of the fact
that my superior officer had put me on to this
job, and
I should be requested to leave the service.'

'Have no fear on that score,' said Racksole.
'I shall, of course,
take all responsibility.'

'It wouldn't matter how much responsibility you
took,' Hazell retorted; 'you wouldn't put me back
into the service, and my career would be at an
end.'

'But there are other careers,' said Racksole,
who was really anxious to lame his ex-waiter by
means of a judiciously-aimed bullet. 'There are
other careers.'

'The Customs is my career,' said Hazell, 'so
let's have no shooting. We'll wait about a bit;
he can't escape. You can have my skewer if you
like' - and he gave Racksole his searching
instrument. 'And you can do what you please,
provided you do it neatly and don't make a row
over it.'

For a few moments the four men were passive in
the boat, surrounded by swirling mist, with black
water beneath them, and towering above them a
half-loaded barge with a desperate and resourceful
man on board. Suddenly the mist parted and
shrivelled away in patches, as though before the
breath of some monster. The sky was visible; it
was a clear sky, and the moon was shining. The
transformation was just one of those
meteorological quick-changes which happen most
frequently on a great river.

'That's a sight better,' said the fat man. At
the same moment a head appeared over the edge of
the barge. It was Jules' face - dark, sinister
and leering.

'Is it Mr Racksole in that boat?' he inquired
calmly; 'because if so, let Mr Racksole step up.
Mr Racksole has caught me, and he can have me for
the asking. Here I am.' He stood up to his full
height on the barge, tall against the night sky,
and all the occupants of the boat could see that
he held firmly clasped in his right hand a short
dagger. 'Now, Mr Racksole, you've been after me
for a long time,' he continued; 'here I am. Why
don't you step up? If you haven't got the pluck
yourself, persuade someone else to step up in your
place . . . the same fair treatment will be
accorded to all.' And Jules laughed a low,
penetrating laugh.

He was in the midst of this laugh when he
lurched suddenly forward.

'What'r' you doing of aboard my barge? Off you
goes!' It was a boy's small shrill voice that
sounded in the night. A ragged boy's small form
had appeared silently behind Jules, and two small
arms with a vicious shove precipitated him into
the water. He fell with a fine gurgling splash.
It was at once obvious that swimming was not among
Jules' accomplishments. He floundered wildly and
sank. When he reappeared he was dragged into the
Customs boat. Rope was produced, and in a minute
or two the man lay ignominiously bound in the
bottom of the boat. With the aid of a mudlark - a
mere barge boy, who probably had no more right on
the barge than Jules himself - Racksole had won
his game. For the first time for several weeks
the millionaire experienced a sensation of
equanimity and satisfaction. He leaned over the
prostrate form of Jules, Hazell's professional
skewer in his hand.

'What are you going to do with him now?' asked
Hazell.

'We'll row up to the landing steps in front of
the Grand Babylon. He shall be well lodged at my
hotel, I promise him.'

Jules spoke no word.

Before Racksole parted company with the Customs
man that night Jules had been safely transported
into the Grand Babylon Hotel and the two watermen
had received their £10 apiece.

'You will sleep here?' said the millionaire to
Mr George Hazell. 'It is late.'

'With pleasure,' said Hazell. The next morning
he found a sumptuous breakfast awaiting him, and
in his table-napkin was a Bank of England note for
a hundred pounds. But, though he did not hear of
them till much later, many things had happened
before Hazell consumed that sumptuous breakfast.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

THE CONFESSION OF MR TOM JACKSON

IT happened that the small bedroom
occupied by Jules during the years he was
head-waiter at the Grand Babylon had remained
empty since his sudden dismissal by Theodore
Racksole. No other head-waiter had been formally
appointed in his place; and, indeed, the absence
of one man - even the unique Jules - could
scarcely have been noticed in the enormous staff
of a place like the Grand Babylon. The functions
of a head-waiter are generally more ornamental,
spectacular, and morally impressive than useful,
and it was so at the great hotel on the
Embankment. Racksole accordingly had the
excellent idea of transporting his prisoner, with
as much secrecy as possible, to this empty
bedroom. There proved to be no difficulty in
doing so; Jules showed himself perfectly amenable
to a show of superior force. Racksole took
upstairs with him an old commissionaire who had
been attached to the outdoor service of the hotel
for many years - a grey-haired man, wiry as a
terrier and strong as a mastiff. Entering the
bedroom with Jules, whose hands were bound, he
told the commissionaire to remain outside the
door. Jules' bedroom was quite an ordinary
apartment, though perhaps slightly superior to the
usual accommodation provided for servants in the
caravanserais of the West End. It was about
fourteen by twelve. It was furnished with a
bedstead, a small wardrobe, a -mall washstand and
dressing-table, and two chairs. There were two
hooks behind the door, a strip of carpet by the
bed, and some cheap ornaments on the iron
mantelpiece. There was also one electric light.
The window was a little square one, high up from
the floor, and it looked on the inner quadrangle.
The room was on the top storey - the eighth - and
from it you had a view sheer to the ground.
Twenty feet below ran a narrow cornice about a
foot wide; three feet or so above the window
another and wider cornice jutted out, and above
that was the high steep roof of the hotel, though
you could not see it from the window. As Racksole
examined the window and the outlook, he said to
himself that Jules could not escape by that exit,
at any rate. He gave a glance up the chimney, and
saw that the flue was far too small to admit a
man's body.

Then he called in the commissionaire, and
together they bound Jules firmly to the bedstead,
allowing him, however, to lie down. All the while
the captive never opened his mouth - merely smiled
a smile of disdain. Finally Racksole removed the
ornaments, the carpet, the chairs and the hooks,
and wrenched away the switch of the electric
light. Then he and the commissionaire left the
room, and Racksole locked the door on the outside
and put the key in his pocket.

'You will keep watch here,' he said to the
commissionaire, 'through the night. You can sit
on this chair. Don't go to sleep. If you hear
the slightest noise in the room blow your
cab-whistle; I will arrange to answer the signal.
If there is no noise do nothing whatever. I don't
want this talked about, you understand. I shall
trust you; you can trust me.'

'But the servants will see me here when they
get up to-morrow,' said the commissionaire, with a
faint smile, 'and they will be pretty certain to
ask what I'm doing of up here. What shall I say
to 'em?'

'You've been a soldier, haven't you?' asked
Racksole.

'I've seen three campaigns, sir,' was the
reply, and, with a gesture of pardonable pride,
the grey-haired fellow pointed to the medals on
his breast.

'Well, supposing you were on sentry duty and
some meddlesome person in camp asked you what you
were doing - what should you say?'

'I should tell him to clear off or take the
consequences, and pretty quick too.'

'Do that to-morrow morning, then, if
necessary,' said Racksole, and departed.

It was then about one o'clock a.m. The
millionaire retired to bed - not his own bed, but
a bed on the seventh storey. He did not, however,
sleep very long. Shortly after dawn he was wide
awake, and thinking busily about Jules. He was,
indeed, very curious to know Jules' story, and he
determined, if the thing could be done at all, by
persuasion or otherwise, to extract it from him.
With a man of Theodore Racksole's temperament
there is no time like the present, and at six
o'clock, as the bright morning sun brought gaiety
into the window, he dressed and went upstairs
again to the eighth storey. The commissionaire
sat stolid, but alert on his chair, and, at the
sight of his master, rose and saluted.

'Anything happened?' Racksole asked.

'Nothing, sir.'

'Servants say anything?'

'Only a dozen or so of 'em are up yet, sir.
One of 'em asked what I was playing at, and so I
told her I was looking after a bull bitch and a
litter of pups that you was very particular about,
sir.'

'Good,' said Racksole, as he unlocked the door
and entered the room. All was exactly as he had
left it, except that Jules who had been lying on
his back, had somehow turned over and was now
lying on his face. He gazed silently, scowling at
the millionaire. Racksole greeted him and
ostentatiously took a revolver from his hip-pocket
and laid it on the dressing-table. Then he seated
himself on the dressing-table by the side of the
revolver, his legs dangling an inch or two above
the floor.

'I want to have a talk to you, Jackson,' he
began.

'You can talk to me as much as you like,' said
Jules. 'I shan't interfere, you may bet on that.'

'I should like you to answer some questions.'

'That's different,' said Jules. 'I'm not going
to answer any questions while I'm tied up like
this. You may bet on that, too.'

'It will pay you to be reasonable,' said
Racksole.

'I'm not going to answer any questions while
I'm tied up.'

'I'll unfasten your legs, if you like,'
Racksole suggested politely, 'then you can sit up.
It's no use you pretending you've been
uncomfortable, because I know you haven't. I
calculate you've been treated very handsomely, my
son. There you are!' and he loosened the lower
extremities of his prisoner from their bonds.
'Now I repeat you may as well be reasonable. You
may as well admit that you've been fairly beaten
in the game and act accordingly. I was determined
to beat you, by myself, without the police, and
I've done it.'

'You've done yourself,' retorted Jules.
'You've gone against the law. If you'd had any
sense you wouldn't have meddled; you'd have left
everything to the police. They'd have muddled
about for a year or two, and then done nothing.
Who's going to tell the police now? Are you? Are
you going to give me up to 'em, and say, "Here,
I've caught him for you". If you do they'll ask
you to explain several things, and then you'll
look foolish. One crime doesn't excuse another,
and you'll find that out.'

With unerring insight, Jules had perceived
exactly the difficulty of Racksole's position, and
it was certainly a difficulty which Racksole did
not attempt to minimize to himself. He knew well
that it would have to be faced. He did not,
however, allow Jules to guess his thoughts.

'Meanwhile,' he said calmly to the other,
'you're here and my prisoner. You've committed a
variegated assortment of crimes, and among them is
murder. You are due to be hung. You know that.
There is no reason why I should call in the police
at all. It will be perfectly easy for me to
finish you off, as you deserve, myself. I shall
only be carrying out justice, and robbing the
hangman of his fee. Precisely as I brought you
into the hotel, I can take you out again. A few
days ago you borrowed or stole a steam yacht at
Ostend. What you have done with it I don't know,
nor do I care. But I strongly suspect that my
daughter had a narrow escape of being murdered on
your steam yacht. Now I have a steam yacht of my
own. Suppose I use it as you used yours! Suppose
I smuggle you on to it, steam out to sea, and then
ask you to step off it into the ocean one night.
Such things have been done. Such things will be
done again. If I acted so, I should at least,
have the satisfaction of knowing that I had
relieved society from the incubus of a scoundrel.'

'But you won't,' Jules murmured.

'No,' said Racksole steadily, 'I won't - if you
behave yourself this morning. But I swear to you
that if you don't I will never rest till you are
dead, police or no police. You don't know
Theodore Racksole.'

'I believe you mean it,' Jules exclaimed, with
an air of surprised interest, as though he had
discovered something of importance.

'I believe I do,' Racksole resumed. 'Now
listen. At the best,
you will be given up to the police. At the
worst, I shall deal with you myself. With the
police you may have a chance - you may get off
with twenty years' penal servitude, because,
though it is absolutely certain that you murdered
Reginald Dimmock, it would be a little difficult
to prove the case against you. But with me you
would have no chance whatever. I have a few
questions to put to you, and it will depend on how
you answer them whether I give you up to the
police or take the law into my own hands. And let
me tell you that the latter course would be much
simpler for me. And I would take it, too, did I
not feel that you were a very clever and
exceptional man; did I not have a sort of sneaking
admiration for your detestable skill and
ingenuity.'

'You think, then, that I am clever?' said
Jules. 'You are right. I am. I should have been
much too clever for you if luck had not been
against me. You owe your victory, not to skill,
but to luck.'

'That is what the vanquished always say.
Waterloo was a bit of pure luck for the English,
no doubt, but it was Waterloo all the same.'

Jules yawned elaborately. 'What do you want to
know?' he inquired, with politeness.

'First and foremost, I want to know the names
of your accomplices inside this hotel.'

'I have no more,' said Jules. 'Rocco was the
last.'

'Don't begin by lying to me. If you had no
accomplice, how did you contrive that one
particular bottle of Romanée-Conti should
be served to his Highness Prince Eugen?'

'Then you discovered that in time, did you?'
said Jules. 'I was afraid so. Let me explain
that that needed no accomplice. The bottle was
topmost in the bin, and naturally it would be
taken. Moreover, I left it sticking out a little
further than the rest.'

'You did not arrange, then, that Hubbard should
be taken ill the night before last?'

'I had no idea,' said Jules, 'that the
excellent Hubbard was not enjoying his accustomed
health.'

'Tell me,' said Racksole, 'who or what is the
origin of your vendetta against the life of Prince
Eugen?'

'I had no vendetta against the life of Prince
Eugen,' said Jules, 'at least, not to begin with.
I merely undertook, for a consideration, to see
that Prince Eugen did not have an interview with a
certain Mr Sampson Levi in London before a certain
date, that was all. It seemed simple enough. I
had been engaged in far more complicated
transactions before. I was convinced that I could
manage it, with the help of Rocco and Em - and
Miss Spencer.'

'Is that woman your wife?'

'She would like to be,' he sneered. 'Please
don't interrupt. I had completed my arrangements,
when you so inconsiderately bought the hotel. I
don't mind admitting now that from the very moment
when you came across me that night in the corridor
I was secretly afraid of you, though I scarcely
admitted the fact even to myself then. I thought
it safer to shift the scene of our operations to
Ostend. I had meant to deal with Prince Eugen in
this hotel, but I decided, then, to intercept him
on the Continent, and I despatched Miss Spencer
with some instructions. Troubles never come
singly, and it happened that just then that fool
Dimmock, who had been in the swim with us, chose
to prove refractory. The slightest hitch would
have upset everything, and I was obliged to - to
clear him off the scene. He wanted to back out -
he had a bad attack of conscience, and violent
measures were essential. I regret his untimely
decease, but he brought it on himself. Well,
everything was going serenely when you and your
brilliant daughter, apparently determined to
meddle, turned up again among us at Ostend. Only
twenty-four hours, however, had to elapse before
the date which had been mentioned to me by my
employers. I kept poor little Eugen for the
allotted time, and then you managed to get hold of
him. I do not deny that you scored there, though,
according to my original instructions, you scored
too late. The time had passed, and so, so far as
I knew, it didn't matter a pin whether Prince
Eugen saw Mr Sampson Levi or not. But my
employers were still uneasy. They were uneasy
even after little Eugen had lain ill in Ostend for
several weeks. It appears that they feared that
even at that date an interview between Prince
Eugen and Mr Sampson Levi might work harm to them.
So they applied to me again. This time they
wanted Prince Eugen to be - em - finished off
entirely. They offered high terms.'

'What terms?'

'I had received fifty thousand pounds for the
first job, of which Rocco had half. Rocco was
also to be made a member of a certain famous
European order, if things went right. That was
what he coveted far more than the money - the vain
fellow! For the second job I was offered a
hundred thousand. A tolerably large sum. I
regret that I have not been able to earn it.'

'Do you mean to tell me,' asked Racksole,
horror-struck by this calm confession, in spite of
his previous knowledge, 'that you were offered a
hundred thousand pounds to poison Prince Eugen?'

'You put it rather crudely,' said Jules in
reply. 'I prefer to say that I was offered a
hundred thousand pounds if Prince Eugen should die
within a reasonable time.'

'And who were your damnable employers?'

'That, honestly, I do not know.'

'You know, I suppose, who paid you the first
fifty thousand pounds, and who promised you the
hundred thousand.'

'Well,' said Jules, 'I know vaguely. I know
that he came via Vienna from - em - Bosnia. My
impression was that the affair had some bearing,
direct or indirect, on the projected marriage of
the King of Bosnia. He is a young monarch,
scarcely out of political leading-strings, as it
were, and doubtless his Ministers thought that
they had better arrange his marriage for him.
They tried last year, and failed because the
Princess whom they had in mind had cast her
sparkling eyes on another Prince. That Prince
happened to be Prince Eugen of Posen. The
Ministers of the King of Bosnia knew exactly the
circumstances of Prince Eugen. They knew that he
could not marry without liquidating his debts, and
they knew that he could only liquidate his debts
through this
Jew, Sampson Levi. Unfortunately for me, they
ultimately wanted to make too sure of Prince
Eugen. They were afraid he might after all
arrange his marriage without the aid of Mr Sampson
Levi, and so - well, you know the rest. . . .
It is a pity that the poor little innocent King of
Bosnia can't have the Princess of his Ministers'
choice.'

'Then you think that the King himself had no
part in this abominable crime?'

'I think decidedly not.'

'I am glad of that,' said Racksole simply.
'And now, the name of your immediate employer.'

'He was merely an agent. He called himself
Sleszak - S-l-e-s-z-a-k. But I imagine that that
wasn't his real name. I don't know his real name.
An old man, he often used to be found at the
Hôtel Ritz, Paris.'

'Mr Sleszak and I will meet,' said Racksole.

'Not in this world,' said Jules quickly. 'He
is dead. I heard only last night - just before
our little tussle.'

There was a silence.

'It is well,' said Racksole at length. 'Prince
Eugen lives, despite all plots. After all,
justice is done.'

'Mr Racksole is here, but he can see no one,
Miss.' The words came from behind the door, and
the voice was the commissionaire's. Racksole
started up, and went towards the door.

'Oh! Dad,' she exclaimed, 'I've only just
heard you were in the hotel. We looked for you
everywhere. Come at once, Prince Eugen is dying -
' Then she saw the man sitting on the bed, and
stopped.

Later, when Jules was alone again, he remarked
to himself, 'I may get that hundred thousand.'

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THE STATE BEDROOM ONCE MORE

WHEN, immediately after the episode
of the bottle of Romanée-Conti in the State
dining-room, Prince Aribert and old Hans found
that Prince Eugen had sunk in an unconscious heap
over his chair, both the former thought, at the
first instant, that Eugen must have already tasted
the poisoned wine. But a moment's reflection
showed that this was not possible. If the
Hereditary Prince of Posen was dying or dead, his
condition was due to some other agency than the
Romanée-Conti. Aribert bent over him, and
a powerful odour from the man's lips at once
disclosed the cause of the disaster: it was the
odour of laudanum. Indeed, the smell of that
sinister drug seemed now to float heavily over the
whole table. Across Aribert's mind there flashed
then the true explanation. Prince Eugen, taking
advantage of Aribert's attention being momentarily
diverted; and yielding to a sudden impulse of
despair, had decided to poison himself, and had
carried out his intention on the spot. The
laudanum must have been already in his pocket, and
this fact went to prove that the unfortunate
Prince had previously contemplated such a
proceeding, even after his definite promise.
Aribert remembered now with painful vividness his
nephew's words: 'I withdraw my promise. Observe
that - I withdraw it.' It must have been instantly
after the utterance of that formal withdrawal that
Eugen attempted to destroy himself.

'It's laudanum, Hans,' Aribert exclaimed,
rather helplessly.

'Surely his Highness has not taken poison?'
said Hans. 'It is impossible!'

'I fear it is only too possible,' said the
other. 'It's laudanum. What are we to do?
Quick, man!'

'His Highness must be roused, Prince. He must
have an emetic. We had better carry him to the
bedroom.'

They did, and laid him on the great bed; and
then Aribert mixed an emetic of mustard and water,
and administered it, but without any effect. The
sufferer lay motionless, with every muscle
relaxed. His skin was ice-cold to the touch, and
the eyelids, half-drawn, showed that the pupils
were painfully contracted.

'Go out, and send for a doctor, Hans. Say that
Prince Eugen has been suddenly taken ill, but that
it isn't serious. The truth must never be known.'

'He must be roused, sire,' Hans said again, as
he hurried from the room.

Aribert lifted his nephew from the bed, shook
him, pinched him, flicked him cruelly, shouted at
him, dragged him about, but to no avail. At
length he desisted, from mere physical fatigue,
and laid the Prince back again on the bed. Every
minute that elapsed seemed an hour. Alone with
the unconscious organism in the silence of the
great stately chamber, under the cold yellow glare
of the electric lights, Aribert became a prey to
the most despairing thoughts. The tragedy of his
nephew's career forced itself upon him, and it
occurred to him that an early and shameful death
had all along been inevitable for this
good-natured, weak-purposed, unhappy child of a
historic throne. A little good fortune, and his
character, so evenly balanced between right and
wrong, might have followed the proper path, and
Eugen might have figured at any rate with dignity
on the European stage. But now it appeared that
all was over, the last stroke played. And in this
disaster Aribert saw the ruin of his own hopes.
For Aribert would have to occupy his nephew's
throne, and he felt instinctively that nature had
not cut him out for a throne. By a natural
impulse he inwardly rebelled against the prospect
of monarchy. Monarchy meant so much for which he
knew himself to be entirely unfitted. It meant a
political marriage, which means a forced marriage,
a union against inclination. And then what of
Nella - Nella!

Hans returned. 'I have sent for the nearest
doctor, and also for a specialist,' he said.

'Good,' said Aribert. 'I hope they will
hurry.' Then he sat down and wrote a card. 'Take
this yourself to Miss Racksole. If she is out of
the hotel, ascertain where she is and follow her.
Understand, it is of the first importance.'

Hans bowed, and departed for the second time,
and Aribert was alone again. He gazed at Eugen,
and made another frantic attempt to rouse him from
the deadly stupor, but it was useless. He walked
away to the window: through the opened casement he
could hear the tinkle of passing hansoms on the
Embankment below, whistles of door-keepers, and
the hoot of steam tugs on the river. The world
went on as usual, it appeared. It was an absurd
world. He desired nothing better than to abandon
his princely title, and live as a plain man, the
husband of the finest woman on earth. . . .
But now! . . . Pah! How selfish he was, to be
thinking of himself when Eugen lay dying. Yet -
Nella!

The door opened, and a man entered, who was
obviously the doctor. A few curt questions, and
he had grasped the essentials of the case.
'Oblige me by ringing the bell, Prince. I shall
want some hot water, and an able-bodied man and a
nurse.'

'Who wants a nurse?' said a voice, and Nella
came quietly in. 'I am a nurse,' she added to the
doctor, 'and at your orders.'

The next two hours were a struggle between life
and death. The first doctor, a specialist who
followed him, Nella, Prince Aribert, and old Hans
formed, as it were, a league to save the dying
man. None else in the hotel knew the real
seriousness of the case. When a Prince falls ill,
and especially by his own act, the precise truth
is not issued broadcast to the universe.
According to official intelligence, a Prince is
never seriously ill until he is dead. Such is
statecraft.

The worst feature of Prince Eugen's case was
that emetics proved futile. Neither of the
doctors could explain their failure, but it was
only too apparent. The league was reduced to
helplessness. At last the great specialist from
Manchester Square gave it out that there was no
chance for Prince Eugen unless the natural vigour
of his constitution should prove capable of
throwing off the poison unaided by scientific
assistance, as a drunkard can sleep off his
potion. Everything had been tried, even to
artificial respiration and the injection of hot
coffee. Having emitted this pronouncement, the
great specialist from Manchester Square left. It
was one o'clock in the morning. By one of those
strange and futile coincidences which sometimes
startle us by their subtle significance, the
specialist met Theodore Racksole and his captive
as they were entering the hotel. Neither had the
least suspicion of the other's business.

In the State bedroom the small group of
watchers surrounded the bed. The slow minutes
filed away in dreary procession. Another hour
passed. Then the figure on the bed, hitherto so
motionless, twitched and moved; the lips parted.

'There is hope,' said the doctor, and
administered a stimulant which was handed to him
by Nella.

In a quarter of an hour the patient had
regained consciousness. For the ten thousandth
time in the history of medicine a sound
constitution had accomplished a miracle impossible
to the accumulated medical skill of centuries.

In due course the doctor left, saying that
Prince Eugen was 'on the high road to recovery,'
and promising to come again within a few hours.
Morning had dawned. Nella drew the great
curtains, and let in a flood of sunlight. Old
Hans, overcome by fatigue, dozed in a chair in a
far corner of the room. The reaction had been too
much for him. Nella and Prince Aribert looked at
each other. They had not exchanged a word about
themselves, yet each knew what the other had been
thinking. They clasped hands with a perfect
understanding. Their brief love-making had been
of the silent kind, and it was silent now. No
word was uttered. A shadow had passed from over
them, but only their eyes expressed relief and
joy.

'Aribert!' The faint call came from the bed.
Aribert went to the bedside, while Nella remained
near the window.

'What is it, Eugen?' he said. 'You are better
now.'

'You think so?' murmured the other. 'I want
you to forgive me for all this, Aribert. I must
have caused you an intolerable trouble. I did it
so clumsily; that is what annoys me. Laudanum was
a feeble expedient; but I could think of nothing
else, and I daren't ask anyone for advice. I was
obliged to go out and buy the stuff for myself.
It was all very awkward. But, thank goodness, it
has not been ineffectual.'

'What do you mean, Eugen? You are better. In
a day or so you will be perfectly recovered.'

'I am dying,' said Eugen quietly. 'Do not be
deceived. I die because I wish to die. It is
bound to be so. I know by the feel of my heart.
In a few hours it will be over. The throne of
Posen will be yours, Aribert. You will fill it
more worthily than I have done. Don't let them
know over there that I poisoned myself. Swear
Hans to secrecy; swear the doctors to secrecy; and
breathe no word yourself. I have been a fool, but
I do not wish it to be known that I was also a
coward. Perhaps it is not cowardice; perhaps it
is courage, after all - courage to cut the knot.
I could not have survived the disgrace of any
revelations, Aribert, and revelations would have
been sure to come. I have made a fool of myself,
but I am ready to pay for it. We of Posen - we
always pay - everything except our debts. Ah!
those debts! Had it not been for those I could
have faced her who was to have been my wife, to
have shared my throne. I could have hidden my
past, and begun again. With her help I really
could have begun again. But Fate has been against
me - always! always! By the way, what was that
plot against me, Aribert? I forget, I forget.'

His eyes closed. There was a sudden noise.
Old Hans had slipped from his chair to the floor.
He picked himself up, dazed, and crept
shamefacedly out of the room.

Aribert took his nephew's hand.

'Nonsense, Eugen! You are dreaming. You will
be all right soon. Pull yourself together.'

'All because of a million,' the sick man
moaned. 'One miserable million English pounds.
The national debt of Posen is fifty millions, and
I, the Prince of Posen, couldn't borrow one. If I
could have got it, I might have held my head up
again. Good-bye, Aribert... . Who is that
girl?'

Aribert looked up. Nella was standing silent
at the foot of the bed, her eyes moist. She came
round to the bedside, and put her hand on the
patient's heart. Scarcely could she feel its
pulsation, and to Aribert her eyes expressed a
sudden despair.

At that moment Hans re-entered the room and
beckoned to her.

'I have heard that Herr Racksole has returned
to the hotel,' he whispered, 'and that he has
captured that man Jules, who they say is such a
villain.'

Several times during the night Nella inquired
for her father, but could gain no knowledge of his
whereabouts. Now, at half-past six in the
morning, a rumour had mysteriously spread among
the servants of the hotel about the happenings of
the night before. How it had originated no one
could have determined, but it had originated.

'Where is my father?' Nella asked of Hans.

He shrugged his shoulders, and pointed upwards.
'Somewhere at the top, they say.'

Nella almost ran out of the room. Her
interruption of the interview between Jules and
Theodore Racksole has already been described. As
she came downstairs with her father she said
again, 'Prince Eugen is dying - but I think you
can save him.'

'I?' exclaimed Theodore.

'Yes,' she repeated positively. 'I will tell
you what I want you to do, and you must do it.'

Chapter Twenty-Nine

THEODORE IS CALLED TO THE RESCUE

AS Nella passed downstairs from the
top storey with her father - the lifts had not yet
begun to work - she drew him into her own room,
and closed the door.

'What's this all about?' he asked, somewhat
mystified, and even alarmed by the extreme
seriousness of her face.

'Dad,' the girl began. 'you are very rich,
aren't you? very, very rich?' She smiled
anxiously, timidly. He did not remember to have
seen that expression on her face before. He
wanted to make a facetious reply, but checked
himself.

'Yes,' he said, 'I am. You ought to know that
by this time.'

'How soon could you realize a million pounds?'

'A million - what?' he cried. Even he was
staggered by her calm reference to this gigantic
sum. 'What on earth are you driving at?'

'A million pounds, I said. That is to say,
five million dollars. How soon could you realize
as much as that?'

'Oh!' he answered, 'in about a month, if I went
about it neatly enough. I could unload as much as
that in a month without scaring Wall Street and
other places. But it would want some
arrangement.'

'Useless!' she exclaimed. 'Couldn't you do it
quicker, if you really had to?'

'If I really had to, I could fix it in a week,
but it would make things lively, and I should lose
on the job.'

'Couldn't you,' she persisted, 'couldn't you go
down this morning and raise a million, somehow, if
it was a matter of life and death?'

He hesitated. 'Look here, Nella,' he said,
'what is it you've got up your sleeve?'

'Just answer my question, Dad, and try not to
think that I'm a stark, staring lunatic.'

'I rather expect I could get a million this
morning, even in London. But it would cost pretty
dear. It might cost me fifty thousand pounds, and
there would be the dickens of an upset in New York
- a sort of grand universal slump in my holdings.'

'Why should New York know anything about it?'

'Why should New York know anything about it!'
he repeated. 'My girl, when anyone borrows a
million sovereigns the whole world knows about it.
Do you reckon that I can go up to the Governors of
the Bank of England and say, "Look here, lend
Theodore Racksole a million for a few weeks, and
he'll give you an IOU and a covering note on
stocks"?'

'But you could get it?' she asked again.

'If there's a million in London I guess I could
handle it,' he replied.

'Well, Dad,' and she put her arms round his
neck, 'you've just got to go out and fix it. See?
It's for me. I've never asked you for anything
really big before. But I do now. And I want it
so badly.'

He stared at her. 'I award you the prize,' he
said, at length. 'You deserve it for colossal and
immense coolness. Now you can tell me the true
inward meaning of all this rigmarole. What is
it?'

'I want it for Prince Eugen,' she began, at
first hesitatingly, with pauses. 'He's ruined
unless he can get a million to pay off his debts.
He's dreadfully in love with a Princess, and he
can't marry her because of this. Her parents
wouldn't allow it. He was to have got it from
Sampson Levi, but he arrived too late - owing to
Jules.'

'I know all about that - perhaps more than you
do. But I don't see how it affects you or me.'

'The point is this, Dad,' Nella continued.
'He's tried to commit suicide - he's so hipped.
Yes, real suicide. He took laudanum last night.
It didn't kill him straight off - he's got over
the first shock, but he's in a very weak state,
and he means to die. And I truly believe he will
die. Now, if you could let him have that million,
Dad, you would save his life.'

Nella's item of news was a considerable and
disconcerting surprise to Racksole, but he hid his
feelings fairly well.

'I haven't the least desire to save his life,
Nell. I don't overmuch respect your Prince Eugen.
I've done what I could for him - but only for the
sake of seeing fair play, and because I object to
conspiracies and secret murders. It's a different
thing if he wants to kill himself. What I say is:
Let him. Who is responsible for his being in debt
to the tune of a million pounds? He's only got
himself and his bad habits to thank for that. I
suppose if he does happen to peg out, the throne
of Posen will go to Prince Aribert. And a good
thing, too! Aribert is worth twenty of his
nephew.'

'That's just it, Dad,' she said, eagerly
following up her chance. 'I want you to save
Prince Eugen just because Aribert - Prince Aribert
- doesn't wish to occupy the throne. He'd much
prefer not to have it.'

'Much prefer not to have it! Don't talk
nonsense. If he's honest with himself, he'll
admit that he'll be jolly glad to have it.
Thrones are in his blood, so to speak.'

'You are wrong, Father. And the reason is
this: If Prince Aribert ascended the throne of
Posen he would be compelled to marry a Princess.'

'Well! A Prince ought to marry a Princess.'

'But he doesn't want to. He wants to give up
all his royal rights, and live as a subject. He
wants to marry a woman who isn't a Princess.'

'Is she rich?'

'Her father is,' said the girl. 'Oh, Dad!
can't you guess? He - he loves me.' Her head fell
on Theodore's shoulder and she began to cry.

The millionaire whistled a very high note.
'Nell!' he said at length. 'And you?. Do you
sort of cling to him?'

'Dad,' she answered, 'you are stupid. Do you
imagine I should worry myself like this if I
didn't?' She smiled through her tears. She knew
from her father's tone that she had accomplished a
victory.

'It's a mighty queer arrangement,' Theodore
remarked. 'But of course if you think it'll be of
any use, you had better go down and tell your
Prince Eugen that that million can be fixed up, if
he really needs it. I expect there'll be decent
security, or Sampson Levi wouldn't have mixed
himself up in it.'

'Thanks, Dad. Don't come with me; I may manage
better alone.'

She gave a formal little curtsey and
disappeared. Racksole, who had the talent, so
necessary to millionaires, of attending to several
matters at once, the large with the small, went
off to give orders about the breakfast and the
remuneration of his assistant of the evening
before, Mr George Hazell. He then sent an
invitation to Mr Félix Babylon's room,
asking that gentleman to take breakfast with him.
After he had related to Babylon the history of
Jules' capture, and had a long discussion with him
upon several points of hotel management, and
especially as to the guarding of wine-cellars,
Racksole put on his hat, sallied forth into the
Strand, hailed a hansom, and was driven to the
City. The order and nature of his operations
there were, too complex and technical to be
described here.

When Nella returned to the State bedroom both
the doctor and the great specialist were again in
attendance. The two physicians moved away from
the bedside as she entered, and began to talk
quietly together in the embrasure of the window.

'A curious case!' said the specialist.

'Yes. Of course, as you say, it's a neurotic
temperament that's at the bottom of the trouble.
When you've got that and a vigorous constitution
working one against the other, the results are apt
to be distinctly curious. Do you consider there
is any hope, Sir Charles?'

'If I had seen him when he recovered
consciousness I should have said there was hope.
Frankly, when I left last night, or rather this
morning, I didn't expect to see the Prince alive
again - let alone conscious, and able to talk.
According to all the rules of the game, he ought
to get over the shock to the system with perfect
ease and certainty. But I don't think he will. I
don't think he wants to. And moreover, I think he
is still under the influence of suicidal mania.
If he had a razor he would cut his throat. You
must keep his strength up. Inject, if necessary.
I will come in this afternoon. I am due now at St
James's Palace.' And the specialist hurried away,
with an elaborate bow and a few hasty words of
polite reassurances to Prince Aribert.

When he had gone Prince Aribert took the other
doctor aside. 'Forget everything, doctor,' he
said, 'except that I am one man and you are
another, and tell me the truth. Shall you be able
to save his Highness? Tell me the truth.'

'There is no truth,' was the doctor's reply.
'The future is not in our hands, Prince.'

'But you are hopeful? Yes or no.'

The doctor looked at Prince Aribert. 'No!' he
said shortly. 'I am not. I am never hopeful when
the patient is not on my side.'

'You mean - ?'

'I mean that his Royal Highness has no desire
to live. You must have observed that.'

'Only too well,' said Aribert.

'And you are aware of the cause?'

Aribert nodded an affirmative.

'But cannot remove it?'

'No,' said Aribert. He felt a touch on his
sleeve. It was Nella's finger. With a gesture
she beckoned him towards the ante-room.

'If you choose,' she said, when they were
alone, 'Prince Eugen can be saved. I have
arranged it.'

'You have arranged it?' He bent over her,
almost with an air of alarm. 'Go and tell him
that the million pounds which is so necessary to
his happiness will be forthcoming. Tell him that
it will be forthcoming today, if that will be any
satisfaction to him.'

'But what do you mean by this, Nella?'

'I mean what I say, Aribert,' and she sought
his hand and took it in hers. 'Just what I say.
If a million pounds will save Prince Eugen's life,
it is at his disposal.'

'But how - how have you managed it? By what
miracle?'

'My father,' she replied softly, 'will do
anything that I ask him. Do not let us waste
time. Go and tell Eugen it is arranged, that all
will be well. Go!'

'But we cannot accept this - this enormous,
this incredible favour. It is impossible.'

'Aribert,' she said quickly, 'remember you are
not in Posen holding a Court reception. You are
in England and you are talking to an American girl
who has always been in the habit of having her own
way.'

The Prince threw up his hands and went back in
to the bedroom. The doctor was at a table writing
out a prescription. Aribert approached the
bedside, his heart beating furiously. Eugen
greeted him with a faint, fatigued smile.

'Eugen,' he whispered, 'listen carefully to me.
I have news. With the assistance of friends I
have arranged to borrow that million for you. It
is quite settled, and you may rely on it. But you
must get better. Do you hear me?'

Eugen almost sat up in bed. 'Tell me I am not
delirious,' he exclaimed.

'Of course you aren't,' Aribert replied. 'But
you mustn't sit up. You must take care of
yourself.'

The change in the patient's face was
extraordinary. His mind seemed to have put on an
entirely different aspect. The doctor was
startled to hear him murmur a request for food.
As for Aribert, he sat down, overcome by the
turmoil of his own thoughts. Till that moment he
felt that he had never appreciated the value and
the marvellous power of mere money, of the lucre
which philosophers pretend to despise and men sell
their souls for. His heart almost burst in its
admiration for that extraordinary Nella, who by
mere personal force had raised two men out of the
deepest slough of despair to the blissful heights
of hope and happiness. 'These Anglo-Saxons,' he
said to himself, 'what a race!'

By the afternoon Eugen was noticeably and
distinctly better. The physicians, puzzled for
the third time by the progress of the case,
announced now that all danger was past. The tone
of the announcement seemed to Aribert to imply
that the fortunate issue was due wholly to
unrivalled medical skill, but perhaps Aribert was
mistaken. Anyhow, he was in a most charitable
mood, and prepared to forgive anything.

'Nella,' he said a little later, when they were
by themselves again in the ante-chamber, 'what am
I to say to you? How can I thank you? How can I
thank your father?'

'You had better not thank my father,' she said.
'Dad will affect to regard the thing as a purely
business transaction, as, of course, it is. As
for me, you can - you can - '

'Ah! Nell!' he exclaimed, putting his arms
round her again. 'Be mine! That is all I want!'

'You'll find,' she said, 'that you'll want
Dad's consent too!'

'Will he make difficulties? He could not, Nell
- not with you!'

'Better ask him,' she said sweetly.

A moment later Racksole himself entered the
room. 'Going on all right?' he enquired, pointing
to the bedroom. 'Excellently,' the lovers
answered together, and they both blushed.

'Ah!' said Racksole. 'Then, if that's so, and
you can spare a minute, I've something to show
you, Prince.'

Chapter Thirty

CONCLUSION

'I'VE a great deal to tell you,
Prince,' Racksole began, as soon as they were out
of the room, 'and also, as I said, something to
show you. Will you come to my room? We will talk
there first. The whole hotel is humming with
excitement.'

'I want to tell you all about last night,'
Racksole resumed, 'about my capture of Jules, and
my examination of him this morning.' And he
launched into a full acount of the whole thing,
down to the least details. 'You see,' he
concluded, 'that our suspicions as to Bosnia were
tolerably correct. But as regards Bosnia, the
more I think about it, the surer I feel that
nothing can be done to bring their criminal
politicians to justice.'

'And as to Jules, what do you propose to do?'

'Come this way,' said Racksole, and led Aribert
to another room. A sofa in this room was covered
with a linen cloth. Racksole lifted the cloth -
he could never deny himself a dramatic moment -
and disclosed the body of a dead man.

It was Jules, dead, but without a scratch or
mark on him.

'I have sent for the police - not a street
constable, but an official from Scotland Yard,'
said Racksole.

'How did this happen?' Aribert asked, amazed
and startled. 'I understood you to say that he
was safely immured in the bedroom.'

'So he was,' Racksole replied. 'I went up
there this afternoon, chiefly to take him some
food. The commissionaire was on guard at the
door. He had heard no noise, nothing unusual.
Yet when I entered the room Jules was gone. He
had by some means or other loosened his
fastenings; he had then managed to take the door
off the wardrobe. He had moved the bed in front
of the window, and by pushing the wardrobe door
three parts out of the window and lodging the
inside end of it under the rail at the head of the
bed, he had provided himself with a sort of
insecure platform outside the window. All this he
did without making the least sound. He must then
have got through the window, and stood on the
little platform. With his fingers he would just
be able to reach the outer edge of the wide
cornice under the roof of the hotel. By main
strength of arms he had swung himself on to this
cornice, and so got on to the roof proper. He
would then have the run of the whole roof. At the
side of the building facing Salisbury Lane there
is an iron fire-escape, which runs right down from
the ridge of the roof into a little sunk yard
level with the cellars. Jules must have thought
that his escape was accomplished. But it
unfortunately happened that one rung in the iron
escape-ladder had rusted rotten through being
badly painted. It gave way, and Jules, not
expecting anything of the kind, fell to the
ground. That was the end of all his cleverness
and ingenuity.'

As Racksole ceased, speaking he replaced the
linen cloth with a gesture from which reverence
was not wholly absent.

When the grave had closed over the dark and
tempestuous career of Tom Jackson, once the pride
of the Grand Babylon, there was little trouble for
the people whose adventures we have described.
Miss Spencer, that yellow-haired, faithful slave
and attendant of a brilliant scoundrel, was never
heard of again. Possibly to this day she
survives, a mystery to her fellow-creatures, in
the pension of some cheap foreign boarding-house.
As for Rocco, he certainly was heard of again.
Several years after the events set down, it came
to the knowledge of Félix Babylon that the
unrivalled Rocco had reached Buenos Aires, and by
his culinary skill was there making the fortune of
a new and splendid hotel. Babylon transmitted the
information to Theodore Racksole, and Racksole
might, had he chosen, have put the forces of the
law in motion against him. But Racksole, seeing
that everything pointed to the fact that Rocco was
now pursuing his vocation honestly, decided to
leave him alone. The one difficulty which
Racksole experienced after the demise of Jules -
and it was a difficulty which he had, of course,
anticipated - was connected with the police. The
police, very properly, wanted to know things.
They desired to be informed what Racksole had been
doing in the Dimmock affair, between his first
visit to Ostend and his sending for them to take
charge of Jules' dead body. And Racksole was by
no means inclined to tell them everything. Beyond
question he had transgressed the laws of England,
and possibly also the laws of Belgium; and the
moral excellence of his motives in doing so was,
of course, in the eyes of legal justice, no excuse
for such conduct. The inquest upon Jules aroused
some bother; and about ninety-and-nine separate
and distinct rumours. In the end, however, a
compromise was arrived at. Racksole's first aim
was to pacify the inspector whose clue, which by
the way was a false one, he had so curtly declined
to follow up. That done, the rest needed only
tact and patience. He proved to the satisfaction
of the authorities that he had acted in a
perfectly honest spirit, though with a high hand,
and that substantial justice had been done. Also,
he subtly indicated that, if it came to the point,
he should defy them to do their worst. Lastly, he
was able, through the medium of the United States
Ambassador, to bring certain soothing influences
to bear upon the situation.

One afternoon, a fortnight after the recovery
of the Hereditary Prince of Posen, Aribert, who
was still staying at the Grand Babylon, expressed
a wish to hold converse with the millionaire.
Prince Eugen, accompanied by Hans and some Court
officials whom he had sent for, had departed with
immense éclat, armed with the
comfortable million, to arrange formally for his
betrothal. Touching the million, Eugen had given
satisfactory personal security, and the money was
to be paid off in fifteen years.

'You wish to talk to me, Prince,' said Racksole
to Aribert, when they were seated together in the
former's room.

'I wish to tell you,' replied Aribert, 'that it
is my intention to renounce all my rights and
titles as a Royal Prince of Posen, and to be known
in future as Count Hartz - a rank to which I am
entitled through my mother. Also that I have a
private income of ten thousand pounds a year, and
a château and a town house in Posen. I tell
you this because I am here to ask the hand of your
daughter in marriage. I love her, and I am vain
enough to believe that she loves me. I have
already asked her to be my wife, and she has
consented. We await your approval.'

'You honour us, Prince,' said Racksole with a
slight smile, 'and in more ways than one, May I
ask your reason for renouncing your princely
titles?'

'Simply because the idea of a morganatic
marriage would be as repugnant to me as it would
be to yourself and to Nella.'

'That is good.' The Prince laughed. 'I suppose
it has occurred to you that ten thousand pounds
per annum, for a man in your position, is a
somewhat small income. Nella is frightfully
extravagant. I have known her to spend sixty
thousand dollars in a single year, and have
nothing to show for it at the end. Why! she
would ruin you in twelve months.'

'Nella must reform her ways,' Aribert said.

'If she is content to do so,' Racksole went on,
'well and good! I consent.'

'In her name and my own, I thank you,' said
Aribert gravely.

'And,' the millionaire continued, 'so that she
may not have to reform too fiercely, I shall
settle on her absolutely, with reversion to your
children, if you have any, a lump sum of fifty
million dollars, that is to say, ten million
pounds, in sound, selected railway stock. I
reckon that is about half my fortune. Nella and I
have always shared equally.'

Aribert made no reply. The two men shook hands
in silence, and then it happened that Nella
entered the room.

That night, after dinner, Racksole and his
friend Félix Babylon were walking together
on the terrace of the Grand Babylon Hotel.

'Because I am getting tired of doing without
it. A thousand times since I sold it to you I
have wished I could undo the bargain. I can't
bear idleness. Will you sell?'

'I might,' said Racksole, 'I might be induced
to sell.'

'What will you take, my friend?' asked
Félix.

'What I gave,' was the quick answer.

'Eh!' Félix exclaimed. 'I sell you my
hotel with Jules, with Rocco, with Miss Spencer.
You go and lose all those three inestimable
servants, and then offer me the hotel without them
at the same price! It is monstrous.' The little
man laughed heartily at his own wit.
'Nevertheless,' he added, 'we will not quarrel
about the price. I accept your terms.'

And so was brought to a close the complex chain
of events which had begun when Theodore Racksole
ordered a steak and a bottle of Bass at the table
d'hôte of the Grand Babylon Hotel.

*

Order a printed copy online at
http://www.scry.com/ayer/ayerctlg/4409394.htm
Our copy-text here was Penguin Books edition (1938-), ISBN 0-1400-0176-X.
The work was originally published serially in a British newspaper
original book: T. Racksole & Daughter; or, the result of an
American millionaire ordering steak and a bottle of Bass at the
Grand Babylon Hotel. London, New York: The New Amsterdam Book Company, 1902. By Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)